"The darlin'!" cried the lawyer, with admiration, and straightway won the minister's heart.
"Marjorie has a cousin stopping at the house of Mr. Carruthers, one of my elders, since last Tuesday night, as blithe and bonnie a young leddy as man could wish to see. While she's here, she's just the light of the whole country side."
Mr. Coristine did not care for this turn in the conversation.
"Tell me some more about little Marjorie," he said.
"Ah," replied the minister, "then you know that her cousin is called Marjorie, too! Little Marjorie went to church once with Miss Du Plessis, whom Perrowne had got to sing in the choir, that was last summer, if I mind right, and, when the two rideeclus candles on the altar were lighted, and the priest, as he calls himself, came in with his surplice on, she put her face down in Miss Cecile's lap. 'What's the trouble, Marjorie?' asked Miss Du Plessis, bending over her. 'He's going to kiss us all good-night,' sobbed the wee thing. 'No he is not, Marjorie; he's on his knees, praying,' replied the young leddy, soothingly. 'That's what papa always does, when he's dressed like that, before he kisses me good-night, but he takes off his boots and things first,' and she sobbed again, for fear Perrowne was coming to kiss them all, put out the candles, and go to bed. If Miss Du Plessis had not been a sober-minded lass, she would have laughed out in the middle of the choir. As it was, she had to hand Marjorie over to a neighbour in a back seat, before the bit lassie would be comforted."
"Ah! did you ever now? the little innocent!"
"It's not that improbable that there'll be a marriage in the church before long. Perrowne's just clean daft and infatuated with his occasional soprano. He's sent her the 'Mirror of Devotion' and the 'Soul's Questioner,' and a lot of nicely bound trash, and walks home with her whenever he has the chance, to the scandal and rage of all his farmers' daughters. It's very injudeecious o' Perrowne, and has dreeven two of his best families to the Kirk. Not that she's no a braw looking lass, stately and deegnified, but she has na the winsomeness of Miss Marjorie."
"Is that your quarter, Mr. Errol?"
"Hech, sirs, I'm an old bachelor that'll never see five and forty again; but, as we say in Scotch or the vernacular Doric, 'an auld carle micht dae waur.' There's not a more sensible, modest, blithesome, bonnie lassie in all the land. It's a thousand peeties some young, handsome, well to do steady, God-fearing man has na asked at her to be 'the light o' his ain fireside.' Gin I were as young as you, Mr. Coristine, I would na think twice about it."
"Avaunt, tempter!" cried the lawyer, "such a subject as matrimony is strictly tabooed between me and my friend."