She was not desirous now, as she had been at first, for more than her own turn of staying at home from the kirk. This was partly because little Marjorie was sometimes able to go there; and when she went she was carried in Allison’s arms, where she rested, sometimes listening to her father’s voice, and sometimes slumbering through the time. But it was partly, also, because there came now and then a message to Allison there.
For some of the good words spoken must be for her, she thought, since the minister said they were for all. Allison was not good at remembering sermons, or even “heads and particulars,” as Robin was. For a long time she had heard nothing but the minister’s voice, and carried away no word of his, either for correction or instruction. His sermons were “beyond her,” as she said. They meant nothing to her. But now and then a good word reached her out of the Book; and sometimes a word of the minister, spoken, as was the way in those days, as a comment on the psalm that was to be sung, or on the chapter that was read, touched her, strangely enough, more even than the words of the Book itself, with which she had been familiar all her life.
One day in early summer she carried her wee Marjorie to the kirk with a sad heart. For the Sabbath-days were the worst to bear, since she had least to do, and more time for thinking. All the morning her thoughts had been with “her Willie,” shut in between stone walls, away from the sunshine and the sweet air, and she was saying to herself: Would the shame and the misery of it all have changed him, and would he come out, angry and reckless, a lost laddie? Oh! if she could only go to meet him at the very door, and if they could get away together over the sea, to that country so great and wide that they might easily lose themselves in it, and so pass out of the sight and out of the thoughts of all who had known them in their happy youth, before trouble had come! Might it not be? And how could it be? Might she not set Brownrig and his wicked wiles at naught, and go with her brother to save him?
And then the minister’s voice was heard: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers.” And so on: “Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.”
“Bring it to pass!” In the midst of her trouble and longing, Allison had almost uttered the words aloud, as though they had been spoken to her alone of all the listening people, and then Marjorie stirred in her slumber and brought her to herself again.
“Rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for Him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in the way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”
Surely those words were for her! And she heard no more till he came to the good man whose “steps are ordered of God.”
“Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand.
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”
And then Robin touched his mother’s hand. For Allison had drawn her big black bonnet over her face to hide from the folk in the kirk the tears which were falling fast on the bright hair of the little sleeper. Mrs Hume made no sign that she saw them, but she prayed silently for the sorrowful woman who all the long winter had kept her sorrow to herself.