"How I could ha' been so stupid as to forget," continued Miss Cotton, "I can't imagine. It's a good long time ago, though, an' Maria never told me his name; but now what do you think o' that, Mrs. Hamilton?"
"Dear, dear, ain't it awful!" exclaimed that lady, in genuine distress. She was of the old school, who considered a minister removed far beyond the frivolities of ordinary mortals, and was completely bewildered. "Mebby that was when he was sowin' his wild oats," she said at last, with some hope.
"Pshaw, mother, ministers ain't supposed to grow wild oats!" cried Bella piously. She was not as much enamoured of Mr. Egerton as formerly; for Wee Andra was openly antagonistic to him since his mysterious disagreement with Donald Neil.
"Don't any o' you girls breathe a word o' this," warned Mrs. Hamilton. "Andra Johnstone an' some o' the other elders aren't too well pleased with the poor fellow now."
"My!" sighed Maggie. "Wouldn't I love to tell Splinterin' Andra that the minister could sing nigger songs and play a banjo. He'd say—'Show me the sinfu' instrument of Belial an' Ah'll smash it into a thoosand splinters!'" She accompanied the speech with such an exaggerated imitation of the old man's vigorous gestures, using the poker in lieu of a cane, that the spectators shrieked with laughter.
"I'm afraid he'd smash the minister, too," declared Sarah.
"Oh, well," said Jessie, "I don't see that there was any harm in Mr. Egerton's singing and playing when he was young——"
"Oh, yes, o' course you'll take his part!" cried Miss Cotton. "But I'll tell you this much, I've got something more to tell, bigger than all that, something that'll make you think he ain't quite so perfect."
"Why, 'Liza!" cried Mrs. Hamilton in alarm, "there surely ain't more!"
"There jist is, Mrs. Hamilton, an' something pretty queer." She was whispering again, and her audience drew near with bated breath. "Maria wrote two whole pages about him, an' she left the worst to the last. She said, 'I s'pose he's a great fella' for the girls, he always was in Toronto, an'—Jessie's lookin' scairt, I do declare! Well, she said he'd better take care 'cause he was engaged to a high-toned lady in Toronto, engaged to be married, mind you! It's true, too, because Maria knows. She's rich, an' awful stylish, an' her name's Helen Weir-Huntley, mind ye, one o' them high-toned names with a stroke in the middle. An' Mrs. McNabb told Mrs. Fraser on the sly that Mrs. Basketful told her he wrote to a girl by that name every week o' his life, only not to tell. An' he gets a letter back every week, too, with a big chunk of red wax on it, an' some kind of a business stamped on; jist stylish folks uses that kind. So I guess you girls had better quit playin' organs an' doin' things for him!"