“Miss Bethia, I can never do that. I am not good at all.”
“Well, I don’t suppose you are. But grace abounds, and you can have it for the asking.”
“But, Miss Bethia, if you mean this because—you expect me to be a minister, like papa, I am not sure, and you may be disappointed—and then—”
“There ain’t much one can be sure of in this world,” said Miss Bethia, with a sigh. “But I can wait. You are young—there’s time enough. If the Lord wants you for His service, He’ll have you, and no mistake. There’s the money, at any rate. Your mother will want you for the next five years, and you’ll see your way clearer by that time, I expect.”
“And do you mean that the money is to be mine—for the university—whether I am to be a minister or not? I want to understand, Miss Bethia.”
“Well, it was with the view of your being a minister, like your father, that I first thought of it, I don’t deny,” said Miss Bethia, gravely. “But it’s yours any way, as soon as your mother thinks best to let you have it. If the Lord don’t want you for his minister, I’m very sure I don’t. If He wants you, He’ll have you; and that’s as good a way to leave it as any.”
There was nothing more to be said, and Miss Bethia had her way after all. And a very good way it was.
“And we’ll just tell the neighbours that I am to take care of the books till you know where you are to put them—folks take notice of everything so. That’ll be enough to say. And, David, you must make out a list of them,—two, indeed,—one to leave with me and one to take, and I’ll see to all the rest.”
And so it was settled. The book-case and the books were never moved. They stand in the study still, and are likely to do so for a good while to come.
This is as good a place as any to tell of Miss Bethia’s good fortune. She was disposed, at first, to think her fortune anything but good; for it took out of her hands the house that had been her home for the last thirty years of her life—where she had watched by the death-bed of father, mother, sister. It destroyed the little twenty-acre farm, which, in old times, she had sowed and planted and reaped with her own hands, bringing to nothing the improvements which had been the chief interest of her life in later years; for, in spite of her determined resistance, the great Railway Company had its way, as great companies usually do, and laid their plans, and carried them out, for making the Gourlay Station there.