As for Agnes, she accepted the fact of the young man’s presence with cheerfulness, except when her ire was raised by his teasing, and then she plied Polly with requests to send him off, but an hour later she would calm down and confess that it was a good arrangement all around, and that his clear head and busy hands would be greatly missed if he should leave them. As time went on that ever present thought, “When mother comes,” took more and more possession of her, and colored all her plans for the future. She did not talk of these plans to Polly, but when she and her father were alone, she would let her thoughts run riot, and at these times, too, it seemed that Fergus Kennedy was more like his old self than outsiders believed he could ever be. With Jeanie Agnes was now on good terms, for Jeanie, once she had confessed her interest in David, made Agnes her _confidante_, and though David was shy and Jeanie coy, the affair was visibly progressing, and Agnes thought it probable that in a year or so there would be another home started in the settlement. Archie of late was more serious than ever, and one day he propounded a question to Agnes which rather puzzled her. “Would ye like to marry a man who’d make ye a home back there in the east, Agnes?” he asked. “And go back there with father? I don’t know, Archie. But there’s no such to marry me, and then there will be mother and the children.” Archie nodded. “It’s a muckle one would have to do with such a family,” he said half to himself and with a sigh. “If he happened to be a puir meenister, it would be hard making out, though maybe--with a farm--” “What are you talking about, Archie?” Agnes interrupted impatiently. “I never heard such maundering talk. Who’s a puir meenister, and what are you trying to say?” Archie roused himself from his revery. “Oh, nothing, Agnes; I was but thinking.” “You’re forever and the day thinking, and what comes of it?” “Something may,” he replied. “Ye’d sober down then,” he said, looking at her speculatively. “I can’t think what you mean. I’ll sober down for no one, unless it be my mother,” she added softly. “Ah, your mother, yes.” And again Archie was plunged in thought so that Agnes flung herself off and declared to Jeanie that Archie was going daft. CHAPTER VIII ARCHIE’S PLAN Agnes was right in charging Archie with doing a deal of thinking, for, ever since the meeting-house had become an assured fact, his yearning for the ministry had increased, and he thought of it day and night. In vain did he tell himself that his father needed him; in vain did he call himself unfit, that tugging at his heartstrings would not cease, and at last the lad took his trouble to the minister himself. “It is a call, lad,” said the good man, after he had heard Archie’s hesitating account of himself. “If there’s a way open to you, take it, for the laborers are few.”