“Forgive me, but you must not put me down so,” said the minister. “I have done wrong in not insisting before. The arrangement was that it should be repaid, and I ought not to have allowed myself to be persuaded out of it, I owed Mr. Anderson——”
“Not a penny, not a penny. All cancelled by his special instructions at his death.”
“Morrison, this has been upon my mind for years. I must be quit of it now.” He raised his voice with a shrill weakness in it. “My wife knows. Where is my wife? I wish my wife to be present when we settle this account finally. Open the door and call her. I must have Mary here.”
“Well, she is a very sensible woman,” said Mr. Morrison, shrugging his shoulders. He disapproved on principle, he said always, of the introduction of women to matters they had nothing to do with, which was the conviction of his period. But he reflected that Buchanan in his present state was little better than a woman, and that the presence of his wife might be a correction. He opened the door accordingly, and she came out of her room in a moment, ready evidently for any call.
“Mary, I wish you to be here while I tell Morrison, once for all, that I must pay this money. I perhaps gave you a false idea when we talked of it before. I made you believe it was a smaller sum than it was. I—I was like the unjust steward—I took my bill and wrote fourscore.”
“What is he meaning now, I wonder?” said Morrison to Mrs. Buchanan, with a half-comic glance aside. “He is just a wee off his head with diseased conscientiousness. I’ve met with the malady before, but it’s rare, I must say, very rare. Well, come, out with it, Buchanan. What is this about fourscore?”
“You misunderstand me,” he cried. “I must demand seriousness and your attention.”
“Bless us, man, we’re not at the kirk,” Morrison said.
The minister was very impatient. He dealt the table a weak blow, as he sometimes did to the cushion of his pulpit.
“Perhaps I did it on purpose,” he said, “perhaps it was half-unconscious, I cannot tell; but I gave you to believe that my debt was smaller than it really was. Morrison, I owed Mr. Anderson three hundred pounds.”