“I had a call from Susie—the other day,” she said at last. Was it possible that it was only on Saturday—the day that was now a marked day, above all others, the day that Robbie came home!
“Ay!” said the minister, for the first time looking up. “Would she have anything to tell you? I’m thinking, Mrs Ogilvy, Susie has no secrets from you.”
“I never heard she had any secrets. She is a real upright-minded, well-thinking woman. I will not say bairn, though she will always be a bairn to me——”
“No, she’s no bairn,” said the minister, shaking his head. “Two-and-thirty well-chappit, as the poor folk say. She should have been married long ago, and with bairns of her own.”
“And how could she be married, I would like to ask you,” cried Mrs Ogilvy, indignant, “with you and your family to look after? And never mother has done better by her bairns than Susie has done by you and yours.”
“I am saying nothing against that. I am saying she has had the burden on her far too long. I told you before her health is giving way under it,” the minister said. He spoke with a little heat, as of a man crossed and contradicted in a statement of fact of which he was sure.
“I see no signs of that,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“I came up the other night,” he went on, “to open my mind to you if I could, but you gave me no encouragement. Things have gone a little further since then. Mrs Ogilvy, you’re a great authority with Susie, and the parish has much confidence in you. I would like you to be the first to know—and perhaps you would give me your advice. It is not as to the wisdom of what I’m going to do. I am just fairly settled upon that, and my mind made up——”
“You are going—to marry again,” she said.
He gave a quick look upward, his middle-aged countenance growing red, the complacent smile stealing to the corners of his mouth. “So you’ve guessed that!”