I can see you smiling to yourself, and saying that you understand now my anxiety to get my picture finished before I leave the farm. All I can say is, you never were more mistaken in your life. I am not falling in love with this newly-discovered beauty, and I certainly don’t intend to do anything so foolish. But I could look at her face by the hour together. I wonder whether there are any capabilities of passion under the cold exterior.
I took an opportunity when Alec was out of the room to narrate our little adventure by the way, and just as I finished my recital the hero of the story came in.
‘So you managed to get run into on the way home, Alec,’ said his father, with a look of displeasure. ‘I should think you might have learned to drive by this time.’
The lad’s face flushed, but he made no answer.
‘Is the mare hurt?’ asked the old man.
‘No, she wasn’t touched,’ answered his son. ‘One of the wheels will want a new spoke; that’s all.’
‘And is that nothing, sir?’
‘No one could possibly have avoided the collision, such as it was,’ said I; ‘and I’ve seldom seen a pluckier thing than Alec did.’
The old man looked at me, and immediately changed the subject.
When tea (a remarkably substantial meal, by the way) was over, the farm-servants and the old woman who acts as housemaid were called into the large parlour in which we were sitting for prayers, or, as they call it here, ‘worship.’ I can’t say I was edified, Sophy. I dare say I am not a particularly good judge of these matters, but really there seemed to me a very slight infusion of worship about the ceremony. First of all Bibles were handed round, and Mr. Lindsay proceeded to read a few lines from a metrical version of the Psalms, beginning in the middle of a Psalm for the excellent reason that they had left off at that point on the preceding evening. Then they began to sing the same verses to a strange, pathetic melody. Margaret led the tune, and it was a pleasure to listen to her sweet unaffected notes, but the rough grumble of the old men and Betty’s discordant squeak produced a really ridiculous effect. Then a chapter was read from the Bible, and then we rose up, turned round, and knelt down. Mr. Lindsay began an extempore prayer, which was partly an exposition of the chapter we had just heard read, and partly an address to the Almighty, which I won’t shock you by describing. At the end of the prayer were some practical petitions, amongst them one on behalf of ‘the stranger within our gates,’ by which phrase your humble servant was indicated. The instant the word ‘Amen’ escaped from the lips of my host, there was a sudden shuffling of feet, and the little congregation had risen to their feet and were in full retreat before I had realized that the service was at an end. I fully expected that this conduct would have called down a reproof from Mr. Lindsay, but it seemed to be accepted on all hands as the ordinary custom. Half an hour afterwards I was in bed, and sound asleep.