“Funny! No. Anything but funny! A very serious matter that would be,” said Jem. “We couldn’t afford to have so many ministers in the family, Miss Bethia. I am not going to be a minister. I am going to make a lot of money and be a rich man, and then I’ll buy a house for papa, and send Davie’s boys to college.”
They all laughed.
“You may laugh, but you’ll see,” said Jem. “I am not going to be a minister. Hard work and poor pay. I have seen too much of that, Miss Bethia.”
He was “chaffing” her. Miss Bethia knew it quite well, and though she had said he was entirely welcome, it made her angry because she could not see the joke, and because she thought it was not respectful nor polite on Jem’s part to joke with her, as indeed it was not. And besides this was a sore subject with Miss Bethia—the poverty of ministers. She had at one time or another spent a great many of her valuable words on those who were supposed to be influential in the guidance of parish affairs, with a design to prove that their affairs were not managed as they ought to be. There was no reason in the world, but shiftlessness and sinful indifference, to prevent all being made and kept straight between the minister and people as regarded salary and support, she declared, and it was a shame that a man like their minister should find himself pressed or hampered, in providing the comforts—sometimes the necessaries of life—for his family.
That was putting it strong, the authorities thought and said, but Miss Bethia never would allow that it was too strong, and she never tired of putting it.
“The labourer is worthy of his hire.”
“They that serve the temple must live by the temple.” And with a house to keep up and his children to clothe and feed, no wonder that Mr Inglis might be troubled many a time when he thought of how they were to be educated, and of what was to become of them in case he should be taken away.
There was no theme on which Miss Bethia was so eloquent as this, and she was eloquent on most themes. She never tired of this one, and answered all excuses and expostulations with a force and sharpness that, as a general thing, silenced, if they did not convince. Whether she helped her cause by this assertion of its claims, is a question. She took great credit for her faithfulness in the matter, at any rate, and as she had not in the past, so she had made up her mind that she should not in the future be found wanting in this respect.
But it was one thing to tell her neighbours their duty with regard to their minister, and it was quite another thing to listen to a lad like Jem making disparaging remarks as to a minister’s possessions and prospects. “Hard work and poor pay,” said Jem, and she felt very much like resenting his words, as a reflection on the people of whom she was one. Jem needed putting down.
“Your pa wouldn’t say so. He ain’t one to wish to serve two masters. He ain’t a mammon worshipper,” said Miss Bethia, solemnly.