"Tell me about Etterick," begged Arthur. "It's a place I want very much to see. Aunt Alice adores it."
"Who wouldn't! It's only a farmhouse with a bit built on, and a few acres of ground round it but there is a walled garden where old flowers grow carelessly, and the heather comes down almost to the door. And there is a burn—what you would call a stream—that slips all clear and shining from one brown pool to another; and the nearest neighbours are three good miles away, and the peeweets cry, and the bees hum among the wild thyme. You can imagine what it means to go there from a Glasgow suburb. The day we arrive, Father swallows his tea and goes out to the garden, snuffing the wind, and murmuring like Master Shallow, 'Marry, good air.' Then off he goes across the moor, and we are pretty sure that the psalm we sing at prayers that night will be 'I to the hills will lift mine eyes.'"
"Etterick belongs to your father?"
"Yes, it is our small inheritance. Father's people have had it for a long time. We can only be there for about two months in the summer, but we often send our run-down or getting-better people for a week or two. The air is wonderful, but it is dull for them, lacking the attractions of Millport or Rothesay—the contempt of your town-bred for the country-dwellers is intense, and laughable. I was going to tell you about the old man who along with his wife keeps it for us. He has the softest, most delicious Border voice, and he remarked to me once, 'A' I ask in the way o' Heaven is juist Etterick—at a raisonable rent.' I thought the 'raisonable rent' rather nice. Nothing wanted for nothing, even in the Better Country."
Arthur laughed, and said the idea carried too far might turn Heaven into a collection of Small Holdings.
"But tell me one thing more. What do you do it for? I mean visiting the sick, teaching Sunday schools, handing people tracts. Is it because you think it is your duty as a parson's daughter?"
Elizabeth turned to look at her companion's face to see if he were laughing; but he was looking quite serious, and anxious for an answer.
"Do you know," she asked him, "what the Scots girl said to the Cockney tourist when he asked her if all Scots girls went barefoot? No? Then I'll tell you. She said, 'Pairtly, and pairtly they mind their ain business.'"
"I deserve it," said Arthur. "I brought it on myself."
"I'm not proud, like the barefoot girl," said Elizabeth. "I'll answer your questions as well as I can. I think I do it 'pairtly' from duty and 'pairtly' from love of it. But oh! isn't it best to leave motives alone? When I go to see Peggy it is a pure labour of love, but when I go to see fretful people who whine and don't wash I am very self-conscious about myself. I mean to say, I can't help saying to myself, 'How nice of you, my dear, to come into this stuffy room and spend your money on fresh eggs and calf's-foot jelly for this unpleasant old thing.' Then I walk home on my heels. You've read Valerie Upton? Do you remember the loathly Imogen and her 'radiant goodness,' and how she stood 'forth in the light'? I sometimes have a horrid thought that I am rather like that."