"You say you can't imagine what Father will do, forbidden to preach (he who loved preaching); forbidden to walk except on level places (he who wore seven-league boots); forbidden to exert himself (he who was so untiring in his efforts to help others). I know. It will be a life of limitations. But I promise you he won't grumble, and he won't look submissive or resigned. He will look as if he were having a perfectly radiant time—and what is more, he will feel it. How triumphantly true it is that the meek inherit the earth! Flowers are left to him, flowers and the air and the sky and the sun; spring mornings, winter nights by the fire, and books—and I may just mention in passing those two unconsidered trifles Buff and me! As I write, I have a picture in my mind of Father in retirement. He will be interested in everything, and always apt at the smallest provocation to be passionately angry at Radicals. (They have the same effect on him as Puritans had on gentle Sir Andrew Aguecheek—you remember?) I can see him wandering in the garden, touching a flower here and there in the queer tender way he has with flowers, listening to the birds, enjoying their meals, reading every adventure book he can lay his hands on (with his Baxter's Saints' Rest in his pocket for quiet moments), visiting the cottage folk, deeply interested in all that interests them, and never leaving without reminding them that there is 'something ayont.' In the words of the old Covenanter, 'He will walk by the waters of Eulai, plucking an apple here and there'—and we who live with him will seem to hear the sound of his Master's feet."
Later she wrote:
"I don't suppose you ever 'flitted,' did you? That is our Scots expression for removing ourselves and our belongings to another house—a misleading bird-like and airy expression for such a ponderous proceeding.
"Just at present all our household gods, and more especially the heavy wardrobes, seem to be lying on my chest. The worry is, we have far too much furniture, for Etterick is already furnished with old good things that it would be a shame to touch, so we can only take the things from here that are too full of associations to leave. We would hate to sell anything, but I wish we could hear of a nice young couple setting up house without much money to do it with, and we would beg of them to take our furniture.
"You would be surprised how difficult it is to leave Glasgow and the church people. I never knew how much I liked the friendly old place until the time came for leaving it; it is like digging oneself up by the roots.
"And the church people are so pathetic. It never seems to have occurred to them that Father might leave them, and they are so surprised and grieved, and so quite certain that if he only goes away for a rest he will soon be fit again and able for his work.
"But I am not really sorry for them. I know quite well that in a few months' time, flushed with tea and in most jocund mood, they will be sitting at an Induction Soiree drinking in praise of their new minister—and thank goodness I shan't be there to hear the speeches! Of course there are some to whom Father simply made life worth living—it hurts me to think of them.
"Life is a queer, confusing thing! There are one or two people in the church who have enjoyed making things difficult (even in the most lamb-like and pleasant congregations such are to be found), and I have always promised myself that some day, in a few well-chosen words, I should tell them what I thought of them. Well, here is my opportunity, and I find I don't want to use it! After all, they are not so complacent, so crassly stupid, so dead to all fine feeling as I thought they were. They are really quite decent folk. The one I disliked most—the sort of man who says a minister is well paid with 'three pounds a week and a free house'—a Socialist, a leveller, this man came to see Father the other night after he had 'cleaned hissel' after the day's work. There were actually tears in his suspicious small eyes when he saw Father so frail-looking, and he talked in what was for him quite a hushed small voice on uncontroversial subjects. As he was going out of the room he stopped and blurted out, 'I niver believed a Tory could be a Christian till I kent you." ... I am glad I won't have to say good-bye to Peggy. I saw her yesterday afternoon, and she didn't seem any worse, and we were happy together. This morning they sent up to tell me she had died suddenly in the night. She went away 'very peaceably,' her father said. It wasn't the word he meant, but he spoke more truly than he knew. She went 'peaceably' because there was no resentment or fear in her child's heart. To souls like Peggy's, innocent and quiet, God gives the knowledge that Death is but His angel, a messenger of light in whom is no darkness at all....
"I have opened this to tell you a piece of news that has pleased me very much. Do you remember my friend Kirsty Christie and her fiancé Mr. Hamilton? Perhaps you have forgotten them, though I expect the evening you spent at the Christies' house is seared on your memory, and I assure you your 'Cockney accent' has quite spoiled Mrs. Christie for the plain Glasgow of her family circle; well, anyway, Kirsty can't marry Mr. Hamilton until he has got a church, and it so happened that the minister at Langhope, the nearest village to Etterick, was finding his work too much and felt he must resign. Here was my chance! (Oh for the old bad days of patronage!) I don't say I didn't pull strings. I did. I pulled about fifty, and tangled most of them; but the upshot is that they have elected Mr. Hamilton to be minister of Langhope. They are a wise and fortunate people, for he is one of the best; and just think of the fun for me having Kirsty settled near us!
"It is the nicest thing that has happened for a long time. I have just thought of another thing—it is a solution of the superfluous furniture problem.