“I’m not sure but ’twould ha’ been, but nothin’ venture nothin’ have is a sayin’ as true now as iver. You don’t want to turn back?”
“I surely do not.”
“That’s the Scotch in ye; an’ ’twould ha’ been the like if ’twere Irish. Now I ha’ the advantage o’ gittin’ it both sides. Me mother’s eyes were as blue as any colleen’s in all Leinster, while the father o’ me was from Argyll, which is sayin’ muckle. The one was papist an’ the father a Presbyterian. When they tell ye oil an’ water’ll not mix, look at me.”
“I’ve heard they don’t ask a man about his religion out in this country.”
“Right, lad, but a mon ha’ need o’ all his religion, I’m thinkin’.”
“Well, as for me, mother is of the established church an’ father is a Dissenter.”
“Either’ll do an’ the both ought. It’ll be no fault of our forebears if we ha’ not religion in plenty, an’ some o’ the gude as should gang wi’ it.”
Rodney thought of the morning prayers at home, his father kneeling by the old splint-bottomed chair. Tears came to his eyes, he knew not why, for was he not soon to see his father and were they not to prosper and go back in the fall for his mother and sister? Yet he looked out on the swirling water as through a mist.
“One of the men said you had seen long service as a soldier in the king’s army, Mr. Ferguson.”