It was a Lover and His LassOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
It was a Lover and His Lass
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
"Which Church is that?" said Lewis, with his friendly candour of mind.
"I am a very great ignoramus."
"Ah, I suppose you are High," said the minister, "and don't acknowledge
our orders. Of course, you cannot expect me to consent to that. The
Church of England is a great institution, but apt to carry things with
a high hand, and look down upon Protestant brethren."
"Ah, yes--but I don't know anything about England," said Lewis, still
puzzled; upon which Mr. Seton made many apologies.
"I ought to have known--of course, your complexion and all that; you
come from the land of enlightenment, where everything is subservient to
intellect. How glad I shall be of the opportunity ask to your advice
about some passages I am in doubt about! Your fatherland is the home of
biblical science."
"I am not a German," said Lewis, "but I know the language well enough,
and if I can be of any use----Oh, no, I am an Englishman, though I
never was in England--unless I may call this England."
"Which you certainly must not do," said the minister; "we've fought
hard enough on that account in our day. I suppose you are here
for the fishing," he added, as everybody did, but with a little
disingenuousness, for by this time all the world was aware that Lewis
did not fish, nor pretend to fish, nor, indeed, do anything but what
the good people of Murkley called idling his time away.
"I am no fisher," he said--"not a sportsman at all, and not much of an
artist either. I am not very good at anything. I came here because it
struck my fancy."
He laughed somewhat uneasily, because it was not true, and he was a bad
deceiver; but then Mr. Seton had no reason to suppose that it was not
true, and he took it with great composure as a natural reason enough.
"It is a fine country," he said. "I am free to say it, for it is not my
country. I am from the south myself."
"The south!" said Lewis, deceived in his turn, and looking with a
little surprise at the fine burly form and grizzled locks of the
clergyman, who seemed to him of the same type as Adam, and not like
anything that he realized as the south. "Do you mean of France, or
still nearer the mezzo-giorno? Oh, I know the south very well. I have
been through the wildest parts of Sicily and Calabria, as well as most
civilized regions."
"I meant Dumfriesshire," said the minister, with a blush. He felt as if
he had been guilty of false pretences. "That is south to us. You have
been a great traveller, Mr.----"
"Murray," said Lewis, quickly.
"You are a Murray, too? Then I suppose you had ancestors in this
district. That's very common; I have had people come here from all
the ends of the world anxious to look at the tombstones or the parish
register."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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