We’re a’ noddin’
At our house at hame.”
MY stay at the manse had been longer than I expected. When I reached Greenknowe, I had hardly recovered from the scare I had got by the proposal to conduct family worship, and my account of the visit to the manse, although short, was a jumble about Bell, and skates, and good Samaritans. Agnes looked at me anxiously, and said, “Are you well enough? You look excited.” I told her what had excited me, at which she first laughed, then looked thoughtful, then sympathetic, and said, “You’re tired, and it is late; come over to-morrow night, if you can;” and after a pause she said, “My mother has often wished me to ask you to make family worship here, and you will just begin to-morrow night.”
This was adding fuel to flame; so, observing my restlessness, she said, “Oh, Robert, forgive me for adding to your excitement” (that was easily done,—the forgiveness, I mean); “you need a good night’s rest.” I did very much, but I did not get it.
I went to bed immediately on going home, tossed and tumbled about, angry at myself for being so unwilling to undertake a duty which, as at one time an aspirant to the ministry, should not have unhinged me. Then my conscience smote me for being undecided in religious matters; then I resolved to be more decided, and began to compose my first social prayer. As I tried this, I found one bit forgotten as another was being thought over. I was about to rise and write a prayer, but checked myself, and resolved to be a man (when a man does this, he is more likely to prove himself a child), and to look for help when it was needed where it was to be found.
P.P.C.
Next night found me at Greenknowe, quietly retailing Mr. and Mrs. Barrie’s sayings; and the “books” were brought in before supper, and I at least got through. Agnes said she was much obliged to me. Mrs. Stewart said little more than “Thank you;” but after the old lady had retired, Agnes told me, in an indirect, quiet way, that Mr. McNab never referred to her mother as “His aged servant,” which I had unwisely done, but as “the handmaid of the Lord.” A young college friend had lost a legacy by a similar mistake in the case of a maiden aunt. My readers will excuse me for leaving this bit to suggest its own lesson. Mrs. Stewart was barely sixty years old: how our ideas of “aged” change as we age ourselves!
I carried quite a bundle of letters to the post office that night, many of them invitations to the marriage, others P.P.Cs., which I got explained by Agnes, after a quick sideward movement of the head down, followed by a slow movement of it up, and an inquiring stare, as much as to say, Do you really not know? “It’s pour prendre congé—to take leave, to say good-bye.”
“Oh,” said I, “Mrs. Barrie spoke about P.P.C.; and when I asked the meaning, she said something about French, and to ask you. That’s P.P.C., is it?”
The marriage took place, but I spare my readers an account of it. I could not describe the dresses so as to inform the ladies, nor the presents (which now-a-days are so numerous and costly as to have to undergo the trying ordeal of being laid out for exhibition in a special room), for these were more useful than ornamental. Many of them were esteemed for the donor’s sake rather than for their intrinsic value; none more so than a book, called Cottage Comforts, from Mrs. Barrie, which proved very useful to us, and became Agnes’s present to young housekeepers she was interested in, many of whom in after life thanked her for the good hints and help it gave them. Mr. Barrie gave me a copy of the Confession of Faith, and asked me to read it carefully. Although it was the standard of the Church to which I belonged, and I had declared my adherence to it, I had till then hardly opened it. When I did look into it, many of its statements seemed harsh, and stated so baldly in logical order and theological language, that they seemed to me very different from the teachings of the Bible, interwoven and relieved as these are by illustration, narrative, and incident; and I still think, because it wants the charm of the associations with which the doctrines are joined in the Scriptures, that it is apt to bewilder, if not to prejudice unfavourably, the ordinary reader; but the more I examine it, and compare the parallel passages (i.e. references to texts confirming the doctrines), I see it deserves the name Mr. Barrie gives it in its relation to the Bible,—“an excellent summary of which is to be found in the Westminster Confession of Faith.” Although the excellence is more marked than the summariness; it is a pretty long summary. The “Apostles’ Creed” comes nearer that.