"No," replied Marjory candidly, "not much."
Blanche looked sympathetically at her friend.
"Well, of course yours don't seem to be quite so nice as ours; but you'll see they'll be different now."
Blanche was right. Mrs. Forester won the day, and to Marjory's intense satisfaction, as they went in at the churchyard gate her uncle told her that she need not write the morning sermon if she would do the afternoon one, and that she was to be allowed to go to tea at Braeside after the service.
The Heathermuir church was an old one; its pews were of the straight, high-backed kind, and once inside them their occupants could see little of their surroundings except the minister, whose desk was raised above the level of the floor. With no temptations to look about her, and relieved of her weekly task, Marjory gave her whole attention to Mr. Mackenzie, trying to understand his meaning instead of mechanically taxing her memory, parrot-like, with his words. She watched the noble old face with its lines of kindliness and patience, the eyes now liquid with pity for the sorrowful wrongdoer, now flashing with indignation as he spoke of the unrepentant and the careless, then softening again as he expressed the hope that their hearts might be touched, and the belief that they too would win forgiveness from a loving Father.
Parts of the sermon were not to be understood by a child such as Marjory—it was addressed to men and women—yet her eyes never left the preacher's face, the sweetie had been quite forgotten, and she carried away with her a mind-picture of a Being full of love, sorry when His children do wrong, just in His punishments, but all-forgiving when they are truly repentant and try to make amends.
In the afternoon Marjory sat in the Braeside pew with Mrs. Forester and Blanche. Again the preacher's theme was love—"the greatest thing in the world"—love to the Creator, and, through it, love to all His creatures great and small. The old man told how love can smooth rough places, can right wrong, can win battles; how love and kindness attract love and kindness in return, and how a loving thought, word, or action is never lost. The words she heard that day sank deeply into Marjory's mind. They were full of hope and encouragement for all, and she felt something of that spirit which prompted the poet to sing so joyously,—
"God's in His heaven; all's right with the world."
Service over, they walked back to Braeside. It was a pretty walk across a bit of moorland, through the heather and bracken, here and there a moss-grown rock, here and there across the path a tiny trickling stream with stepping-stones.
"Did you have to ask the doctor very hard to make him let Marjory come, mother?" asked Blanche as they walked along.