"So she does," replied the other, "and that is the State church of Scotland."
"Miss Helen thinks that's fine," broke in my uncle. "I'm sure her far-off ancestors must have been Scotch Presbyterians, Mr. Laird. She's a regular Puritan—in theory."
"Then you'll be going to the service at the opening of Presbytery to-night, Miss Randall," said Mr. Laird, turning to me.
I was silent, not knowing just what to say. Yet I felt that uncle's statement was quite just all the time. For, ever since a child, I had had a kind of passionate devotion to the church of my fathers; yet it is only fair to add that if there was one girl in all our town who would not have been called religious, who would, in fact, have been called a gay society girl—what a poor garish definition that seems to me now!—I was that very one.
"What her uncle says about Helen reminds me of something I must tell you, Mr. Laird," began my mother, breaking the silence that had followed his rather pointed question. "I always taught her the Shorter Catechism when she was a little girl—made her learn it, at least—and one Sunday afternoon I was following her around the yard trying to get her to answer what is Sanctification; well, she suddenly turned to me, and what do you think she said?"
"Couldn't imagine, I'm sure," answered Mr. Laird.
"'What's the use, mother,' she said, 'of teaching me all this—when perhaps I won't marry a Presbyterian at all?'"
"All the more need of it then," replied our guest amid the laugh that followed; "it won't be wasted anyhow, whoever the lucky man may be. It's wonderful how that catechism stays with you, when once it gets in the blood. I learned it on the hills of Scotland," he went on, his deep eyes brightening as if the memory gave him joy, "and I hardly ever wander now in wild or lonely regions without its great words coming back to me. They go well together, I always think—they're both lofty."
"On the hills?" echoed Mr. Giddens, who had never lived outside the city; "did your father send you there to learn it?—pretty hard lines, I should say."
"Oh, no," Mr. Laird answered simply, "my work lay there. I used to take care of sheep on the hills—I was a herd laddie, as they call them in Scotland. My father is a shepherd."