Mrs. Macdonald took up her sock again with a long sigh.
"I wish I could comfort myself with thoughts as you can, John, but I never had any mind. No, Jean, you needn't protest so politely. I'm a good house-wife and I admit my shortbread is 'extra,' as Duncan used to say. Duncan was very sorry as a small boy that he had left heaven and come to stay with us. He used to say with a sigh, 'You see, heaven's extra.' I don't know where he picked up the expression. But what I was going to say is that people are so wretchedly provoking. This morning I was really badly provoked. For one thing, I was very busy doing the accounts of the Girls' Club (you know I have no head for figures), and Mrs. Morton strolled in to see me, to cheer me up, she said. Cheer me up! She maddened me. I haven't been forty years a minister's wife without learning patience, but it would have done me all the good in the world to take that woman by her expensive fur coat and walk her rapidly out of the room. She sat there breathing opulence, and told me how hard it was for her to live—she, a lone woman with six servants to wait on her and a car and a chauffeur! 'I am not going to give to this War Memorial,' she said. 'At this time it seems rather a wasteful proceeding, and it won't do the men who have fallen any good.' … I could have told her that surely it wasn't waste the men were thinking about when they poured out their youth like wine that she and her like might live and hug their bank books."
Mr. Macdonald had moved from his chair in the window, and now stood with one hand on the mantelshelf looking into the fire. "Do you remember," he said, "that evening in Bethany when Mary took a box of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, so that the odour of the ointment filled the house? Judas—that same Judas who carried the bag and was a robber—was much concerned about the waste. He said that the box might have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor. And Jesus, rebuking him, said, 'The poor always ye have with you, but Me ye have not always.'"
He stopped abruptly and went over to his writing-table and made as though he were arranging papers. Presently he said, "Anne, you've been here." His tone was accusing.
"Only writing a post card," said his wife quickly. "I can't have made much of a mess." She turned to her visitors and explained: "John is a regular old maid about his writing-table; everything must be so tidy and unspotted."
"Well, I can't understand," said her husband, "why anyone so neat handed as you are should be such a filthy creature with ink. You seem positively to sling it about."
"Well," said Mrs. Macdonald, changing the subject "I like your idea of helping ministers, Jean. I've often thought if I had the means I would know how to help. A cheque to a minister in a city-charge for a holiday; a cheque to pay a doctor's bill and ease things a little for a worn-out wife. You've a great chance, Jean."
"I know," said Jean, "if you will only tell me how to begin."
"I'll soon do that," said practical Mrs. Macdonald "I've got several in my mind this moment that I just ache to give a hand to. But only the very rich can help. You can't in decency take from people who have only enough to go on with…. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll see if Agnes is getting the tea. I want you to taste my rowan and crab-apple jelly, Miss Reston, and if you like it you will take some home with you."
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