“There’s naebody hereabouts but Airchie could have made sic’ a thing. The beadle tell’t me that he saw him sitting ahint the whins wi’ his box of paint as he gae’d down the manse road, and syne when he came back the image was there.”
As he finished his sentence the door opened and a small figure was arrested on the threshold by the sight of him. The little boy paused, disconcerted and staring, and a faint colour rose in his olive face. Then his glum look changed to a smile in which roguery, misgiving, and an intense malicious joy were blended. He looked from one to the other.
“Archie, come in and make your reverence to Mr. Duthie,” said Madam Flemington, who had all at once relapsed into punctiliousness.
Archie obeyed. His skin and his dark eyes hinted at his mother’s French blood, but his bow made it a certainty.
The minister offered no acknowledgment.
If Archie had any doubt about the reason of Mr. Duthie’s visit, it did not last long. The minister was not a very stern man in daily life, but now the Pope and Madam Flemington between them had goaded him off his normal peaceable path, and his expression bade the little boy prepare for the inevitable. Archie reflected that his grandmother was a disciplinarian, and his mind went to a cupboard in the attics where she kept a cane. But the strain of childish philosophy which ran through his volatile nature was of a practical kind, and it reminded him that he must pay for his pleasures, and that sometimes they were worth the expense. Even in the grip of Nemesis he was not altogether sorry that he had drawn that picture.
Madam Flemington said nothing, and Mr. Duthie beckoned to him to come nearer.
“Child,” said he, “you have put an affront upon the whole o’ the folk of this parish. You have raised up an image to be a scandal to the passers-by. You have set up a notorious thing in our midst, and you have caused words to issue from its mouth that the very kirk-officer, when he dichted it out wi’ his clout, thought shame to look upon. I have jaloused it right to complain to your grandmother and to warn her, that she may check you before you bring disgrace and dismay upon her and upon her house.”
Archie’s eyes had grown rounder as he listened, for the pomp of the high-sounding words impressed him with a sense of importance, and he was rather astonished to find that any deed of his own could produce such an effect. He contemplated the minister with a curious detachment that belonged to himself. Then he turned to look at his grandmother, and, though her face betrayed no encouragement, the subtle smile he had worn when he stood at the door appeared for a moment upon his lips.
Mr. Duthie saw it. Madam Flemington had not urged one word in defence of the culprit, but, rightly or wrongly, he scented lack of sympathy with his errand. He turned upon her.