The minister commended himself to his Maker, and went about his own proper business. Every Sabbath, after the sermon, often also before the service, Fergus Teeman was on hand to say his word of reproof to the young minister, to interject the sneering word which, like the poison of asps, turned sweet to bitter. Had Duncan Stewart been older or wiser, he would have showed him to the door. Unfortunately he was just a simple, honest, well-meaning lad from college, trying to do his duty in the Kirk in the Vennel so far as he knew it.
There was an interval of some months before the minister could bring himself to visit again the shop and house of his critical elder. This time he thought that he would try the other door. As yet he had only paid his respects at a distance to Mrs. Teeman. It seemed as if they had avoided each other. He was shown into a room in which a canary was swinging in the window, and a copy of Handel's Messiah lay on the open piano. This was unlike the account he had heard of Mrs. Teeman. There was a merry voice on the stairs, which said clearly in girlish tones—
"Do go and make yourself decent, father; and then if you are good you may come in and see the minister!"
Duncan Stewart said to himself that something had happened. He was right, and something very important, too. May Teeman was "finished."
"And I hope you like me," she had said to her father when she came home. "Sit down, you disreputable old man, till I do your hair. You're not fit to be seen!"
And, though it would not be credited in the Port, it is a fact that Fergus Teeman sat down without a word. In a week her father was a new man. In a fortnight May kept the key of the cupboard where the square decanter was hidden.
A tall, slim girl with an eager face, and little wisps of fair hair curling about her head, came into the room and frankly held out her hand to the minister.
"You are Mr. Stewart. I am glad to see you."
Whereupon they fell a-talking, and in a twinkling were in the depths of a discussion upon poetry. Duncan Stewart was so intent on watching the swift changes of expression across the face of this girl, that he made several flying shots in giving his opinions of certain poems—for which he was utterly put to shame by May Teeman, who instantly fastened him to his random opinions and asked him to explain them.
To them entered another Fergus Teeman to the militant critic of the
Sabbath morning whom Duncan knew too well.