Country life -- Scotland -- Fiction; Domestic fiction; Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
"Some drove from Muirtown, giving out that they were English tourists,
speaking with a fine East Coast accent, and were rebuked by Lachlan
Campbell for breaking the Sabbath. Your men put up their trap at the
last farm in Netheraird--which always has grudged Drumtochty its
ministers and borne their removal with resignation--and came up in
pairs, who pretended they did not know one another.
"Jamie was hearing the Professor's last lecture on Justification, and
our people asked him to take charge of the strangers. He found out the
town from their hats, and escorted them to the boundaries of the
parish, assisting their confidences till one of your men--I think it
was the Provost--admitted that it had taken them all their time to
follow the sermon.
"'A 'm astonished at ye,' said Jamie, for the Netheraird man let it
out; 'yon wes a sermon for young fouk, juist milk, ye ken, tae the
ordinar' discoorses. Surely,' as if the thought had just struck him,
'ye werena thinkin' o' callin' Maister Cunningham tae Muirtown.
"'Edinboorgh, noo; that micht dae gin the feck o' the members be
professors, but Muirtown wud be clean havers. There's times when the
Drumtochty fouk themsels canna understand the cratur, he 's that deep.
As for Muirtown'--here Jamie allowed himself a brief rest of enjoyment;
'but ye've hed a fine drive, tae say naethin' o' the traivel.'"
Then, having begun, Carmichael retailed so many of Jamie's most wicked
sayings, and so exalted the Glen as a place "where you can go up one
side and down the other with your dogs, and every second man you meet
will give you something to remember," that the city dignitary doubted
afterwards to his wife "whether this young man was . . . quite what we
have been accustomed to in a Free Church minister." Carmichael ought
to have had repentances for shocking a worthy man, but instead thereof
laughed in his room and slept soundly, not knowing that he would be
humbled in the dust by mid-day to-morrow.
It seemed to him on the platform as if an hour passed while he, who had
played with a city father, stood, clothed with shame, before this
commanding young woman. Had she ever looked upon a more abject wretch?
and Carmichael photographed himself with merciless accuracy, from his
hair that he had not thrown back to an impress of dust which one knee
had taken from the platform, and he registered a resolution that he
would never be again boastfully indifferent to the loss of a button on
his coat. She stooped and fed the dogs, who did her homage, and he
marked that her profile was even finer--more delicate, more perfect,
more bewitching--than her front face, but he still stood holding his
shapeless hat in his hand, and for the first time in his life had no
words to say.
"They are very polite dogs," and Miss Carnegie gave Carmichael one more
chance; "they make as much of a biscuit as if it were a feast; but I do
think dogs have such excellent manners, they are always so
un-self-conscious."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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