"Here I am keeping you, and Mr. Townshend standing waiting in the lobby. Poor man! He seems nice, Lizbeth, but he's _awfully_ English." Elizabeth followed her friend to the door, and stooping down, kissed her. "Bless you, Kirsty," she said. She was rather silent on the way home. She said Mr. Christie's jocularity had depressed her. "I suppose _I_ may not laugh," Mr. Townshend remarked, "but I think Fish would have 'lawffed.' That's a good idea of yours about slaves." "Were you listening?" she smiled ruefully. "It was wretched of me, when you think of that faithful couple, Marget and Ellen. That's the worst of this world, you can't score off one person without hurting someone quite innocent." They found Mr. Seton sitting by the drawing-room fire. He had had a harassed day, waging warfare against sin and want (a war that to us seems to have no end and no victory, for still sin flaunts in the slums or walks our streets with mincing feet, and Lazarus still sits at our gates, "an abiding mystery," receiving his evil things), and he was taking the taste of it out of his mind with a chapter from _Guy Mannering_. So far away was he under the Wizard's spell that he hardly looked up when the revellers entered the room, merely remarking, "Just listen to this." He read: "'I remember the tune well,' he said. He took the flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody.... She immediately took up the song: 'Are these the links of Forth, she said; Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonny woods of Warrock Head That I so plainly see?' "'By Heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'" Mr. Seton closed the book with a sigh of pleasure, and asked them where they had been. Elizabeth told him, and "Oh, yes, I remember now," he said. "Well, I hope you had a pleasant evening?" "I think Mr. Christie had, anyway. That man's life is one long soiree-speech. And I wouldn't mind if he were really gay and jolly and carefree; but I know that at heart he is shrewd and calculating and un-simple as he can be. But, Father, the nicest thing has happened. Kirsty has got engaged to a man called Andrew Hamilton, a minister, a real jewel. You would like him, I know. But he hasn't got a church yet, although he is worth a dozen of the people who do get churches, and I was wondering what about Langhope? It's the nearest village to Etterick," she explained to Arthur. "It's high time Mr. Smillie retired. He is quite old, and he has money of his own, and could go and live in Edinburgh and attend all the Committees. It is such a good manse, and I can see Kirsty keeping it so spotless, and Mr. Hamilton working in the garden--and hens, perhaps--and everything so cosy. There's a specially good storeroom, too. I know, because we used to steal raisins and things out of it when we visited Mr. Smillie." Mr. Seton laughed and called her an absurd creature, and Arthur asked if a good store-room was necessary to married happiness; but she heeded them not.