The library was the smaller room of the three. You could not have guessed it was a library, had not the minister’s sister been at pains to inform you. There was a small bookcase in it, veiled with curtains within the glass doors, and a study table; in the reign of the last minister it had been overflowing in all its corners with books--at present it was much too trimly arranged for that. The room had to do double duty; it was parlour as well as study. There Miss Insches sat, holding in her breath on the Fridays and Saturdays lest she should disturb Robert at his preparations; and there in the earlier days of the week, when Robert had no sermons to write, the elderly, worshipping sister, and the young idol brother, were very comfortable together. The young man was a genius in his way, and preached as no one had preached in Fendie for long years before. Save for the one weakness of making a hobby of his “position,” indeed he had good sense and good feeling as well as talent, and promised to be noticeable in his generation. Only the sudden change from the hard student life and cares of poverty, to the good stipend and much-prized “station” of Fendie, had a little dazzled the eyes of the Reverend Robert, and, like other young men, he rode his hobby hard and furiously. At the fireside in the “library” his sister and he sat together; there was some consternation in the plump, good-humoured face of Miss Insches. She was evidently bewildered--“a party!” “You know, Janet, I don’t by any means intend a formal, large party,” said the Reverend Robert, who had been for the last ten minutes vainly endeavouring to convey a less magnificent idea of his intention to his sister’s perplexed mind. “A few friends merely--a few of your own friends--it is necessary, you know, that we should not show ourselves unsocial.” “My own friends?” Miss Insches was rather obtuse. “There’s the provost’s wife, and there’s Miss Rechie Sinclair, and Mrs Irving of Friarsford--is’t them you’re meaning, Robert?” Robert was impatient. “I am sure, Janet, you can have no pleasure in the company of a vulgar person like Mrs Irving--and the provost’s wife--I don’t like her, you know;--and Miss Rechie--well, she’s a good little woman--but she would be quite out of place in my drawing-room, surely.” Miss Insches looked awed and reverential. It was very true that these plebeian personages would not at all suit the Reverend Robert’s dignified drawing-room, of which she herself was only a tenant at will, liable to be ejected whenever it should please its lord and master to bring home a wife. “And our Robert’s a fine-looking lad, as well as a clever,” said Miss Insches under her breath; “he might marry onybody he likit.” “Maybe it would be best to tell me, Robert,” she said aloud, humbly, “what folk you were thinking to ask--and then I would ken.” “Well, Janet,” said the minister graciously, “there’s Mr Halbert Graeme and Miss Maxwell of Mossgray.”