It was a hard winter, and there was more than the usual hardships among the very poor. James Seton, toiling up and down the long stairs of the Gorbals every day of the week and preaching three times on the Sabbath, was sometimes very weary.
Elizabeth, too, worked hard and laughed much, as was her way.
It took very little to make her laugh, as she told Arthur Townshend.
"This has been a nasty day," she wrote. "The rain has never ceased—dripping yellow rain. (By the way, did you ever read in Andrew Lang's My Own Fairy Book about the Yellow Dwarf who bled yellow blood? Isn't it a nice horrible idea?)
"At breakfast it struck me that Father looked frail, and Buff sneezed twice, and I made up my mind he was going to take influenza or measles, probably both, so I didn't feel in any spirits to face the elements when I waded out to do my shopping. But when I went into the fruit shop and asked if the pears were good and got the reply 'I'm afraid we've nothing startling in the pear line to-day,' I felt a good deal cheered. Later, walking in Sauchiehall Street, I met Mrs. Taylor in her 'prayer-meeting bonnet,' her skirt well kilted, goloshes on her feet, and her circular waterproof draping her spare figure. After I had assuaged her fears about my own health and Father's and Buff's I complimented her on her courage in being out on such a day.
"'I hed to come,' she assured me earnestly; 'I'm on ma way to the Religious Tract Society to get some cards for mourners.'
"The depressing figure she made, her errand, and the day she had chosen for it, sent me home grinning broadly. Do you know that in spite of ill weather, it is spring? There are three daffodils poking up their heads in the garden, and I have got a new hat to go to London with some day in April. What day, you ask, is some day? I don't know yet. When Buff was a very little boy, a missionary staying in the house said to him, 'And some day you too will go to heaven and sing among the angels.' Buff, with the air of having rather a good excuse for refusing a dull invitation, said, 'I can't go some day; that's the day I'm going to Etterick.'"
But Elizabeth did not go to London in April.
One Sabbath in March, James Seton came in after his day's work admitting himself strangely tired.
"My work has been a burden to me to-day, Lizbeth," he said; "I'm getting to be an old done man."