She found him in his comfortable study, his slippered feet on the fender, and a polemico-religious novel in his hand. "I am sorry to find my cousin has made an engagement for me this evening," she said. "It is quite impossible for me to fulfil it." "Oh, nonsense!" he said kindly. "It is too late to withdraw now. Your name is in the programme," and he glanced at the neatly written paper on his writing-table, as if it had been a legal document at the least. "My wife is making copies of that for all the speakers. You can't draw back now." "It might be too late to withdraw," said Mona, "if I had ever put myself forward; but, although my cousin meant to act kindly to every one concerned, she and I are two distinct people." "Come, come! Of course I quite understand your feeling a little shy, if you are not used to singing in public; but you will be all right as soon as you begin. I remember my first sermon--what a state I was in, to be sure! And yet they told me it was a great success." "I am very sorry," said Mona. "It is not mere nervousness and shyness--though there is that too, of course--it is simply that I am not qualified to do it." "We are not very critical. There won't be more than three persons present who know good singing from bad." "Unfortunately I should wish to sing for those three." "Ah," he said, with a curl of his lip, "you must have appreciation. The lesson some of us have got to learn in life, Miss Maclean, is to do without appreciation." He paused, but her look of sudden interest was inviting. "One is tempted sometimes to think that one could speak to so much more purpose in a world where there is some intellectual life, where people are not wholly blind to the problems of the day; but to preach Sunday after Sunday to those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, to suppress one's best thoughts----" He stopped short. "It is a pity surely to do that, unless one is a prophet indeed." "Ah," he said, "you cannot understand my position. It is a singular one, unique perhaps.--You will sing for us to-night?" "Mr Stuart," said Mona, struggling against the temptation to speak sharply, "I should not have left my work to come here in the busiest time of the day, if I had been prepared to yield in the end. And indeed why should I? There are plenty of people in the neighbourhood who sing as well as I; and people who are well known have a right to claim a little indulgence. I have none. It is not even as if I were a member of the Chapel." "I hope you will be soon." "Well," said Mona, rising with a smile, "you have more pressing claims on your attention at present than my conversion to Baptist principles. Good morning." "Yes," he said reproachfully, "I must go out in this rain, and try to beat up a substitute for you. A country minister's life is no sinecure, Miss Maclean; and his work is doubled when he feels the necessity of keeping pace with the times." He glanced at the book he had laid down.