"Oh yes, but he hadn't Mr. Johnston's business capacity. He was the despair of those who look for the reality of things in minute-books and financial statements. A small audience never troubled him. Every one was there that the message was meant for, he sometimes told me. For what the world calls success he never craved. I could see that it was fine, but it was rather annoying, too." Ann laughed, and Marget said reminiscently, "It was a braw kirk when we got it a' pentit and the seats widened, and a choir and organ and hymns..." "Yes," said Mrs. Douglas; "gradually the service was brought into line with present-day ideas. I confess I was rather sorry, and your father would have been very pleased to leave it as it was. He infinitely preferred the Psalms of David to mere 'human' hymns." "I should think so," said Ann. "Imagine singing a chirruppy hymn when one might sing 'O thou, my soul, bless God the Lord,' to the tune of 'French.'" "'Deed," said Marget, "a buddy never gets tired o' the psalms; they're wonderfu' comfortin', but some o' the hymns are ower bairnly even for bairns. I've a fair ill-will at that yin aboot 'What can little eyes do?' but I like fine to sing 'There is a happy land far, far away.' We aye sung that on Sabbath nichts when ye were a' wee." "There's a lot in association," Ann said. "Words you have loved as a child have always a glamour over them. I liked the sound of the psalms, but I got dreadfully tied up in the hymns. I always sang: 'Can a woman's tender care Cease towards the child she-bear?' with the picture in my mind of a dear fubsey bear being petted. D'you remember Robbie always chose hymns that mentioned Satan?" "Ay," Marget said seriously. "Puir Maister Robbie had aye an awfu' wark wi' Satan, when he was a wee laddie." Ann laughed, and, getting up from the fender-stool, went over to the bureau. "Mother," she said, "I promised to ask Mr. Scott over to see our funny little house. Would luncheon on Thursday be a suitable sort of time?" CHAPTER XIV Ann had been writing steadily for nearly an hour. Her mother, watching her, said: "I'm afraid, if you write so hard, your brain will go." Ann, as if glad of the interruption, laid her pen in a china dish, pushed away the sheets of paper, sighed deeply, and, rising, came over to the fire. "I know it will," she said. "I can feel it doing it. It's that old _Life_ of yours--I can't make it sound right. Sir Walter Raleigh talks somewhere of men whose true selves are almost completely obscured beneath their ragged and incompetent speech. I'm afraid I'm concealing you completely under my 'ragged and incompetent' words. If you live to be ninety, as you threaten, it will be all right; the children will be able to make their own estimate, but, if they have to depend on my _Life_, I don't quite know what they'll make of you."