“I thought I told you they were exceedingly good people. They were very kind to me, though they looked on me as a lost heretic. I am sure they said prayers for me many times a day!”
The Doctor looked more hopeful. He was thinking that after all he might make something of his strange parishioner, when the young lady recalled him by a repetition of her former declaration, “As I said, I have no religious prejudices!”
“No,” said the Doctor a little sharply—for him, “but still each one of us ought to be fully persuaded in his own mind.”
“And that means,” Miss Irma answered, quick as a flash, “that most of us are fully persuaded according to our father and mother’s mind, and the way they have brought us up. But then, you see, I never was brought up. I know very well that my family were Presbyterians. Once I read about their sufferings in two great volumes by a Mr. Wodrow, or some such name. But then my grandfather lost most of his estates fighting for the King——”
“For the Popish Pretender,” said the Doctor, who could speak no smooth things when it was a matter of the Revolution Settlement and the government of King George.
“For the man he believed to be king, while others stayed snugly at home,” persisted Miss Irma. “Then my mother was a Catholic, and my father too busy to care——”
“My poor young maid,” said the Doctor, “it is wonderful to see you as you are!”
And secretly the excellent man was planning out a campaign to lead this lamb into the fold of that Kirk of Scotland, for the purity of whose doctrine and intact spiritual independence her forefathers had shed their blood.
“At any rate,” said he, rising and bending again over the girl’s hand with old-fashioned politeness, “you will remember that your family pew is in the front of our laft—I mean in the gallery of the parish kirk of Eden Valley.”
And the Doctor took his leave without ever remembering that he had failed in the principal part of his mission, having quite forgotten to find out by what means these two young things came to find themselves alone in the Great House of Marnhoul.