"But I am not really sorry for them. I know quite well that in a few months' time, flushed with tea and in most jocund mood, they will be sitting at an Induction Soiree drinking in praise of their new minister--and thank goodness I shan't be there to hear the speeches! Of course there are some to whom Father simply made life worth living--it hurts me to think of them. "Life is a queer, confusing thing! There are one or two people in the church who have enjoyed making things difficult (even in the most lamb-like and pleasant congregations such are to be found), and I have always promised myself that some day, in a few well-chosen words, I should tell them what I thought of them. Well, here is my opportunity, and I find I don't want to use it! After all, they are not so complacent, so crassly stupid, so dead to all fine feeling as I thought they were. They are really quite decent folk. The one I disliked most--the sort of man who says a minister is well paid with 'three pounds a week and a free house'--a Socialist, a leveller, this man came to see Father the other night after he had 'cleaned hissel' after the day's work. There were actually tears in his suspicious small eyes when he saw Father so frail-looking, and he talked in what was for him quite a hushed small voice on uncontroversial subjects. As he was going out of the room he stopped and blurted out, 'I niver believed a Tory could be a Christian till I kent you." ... I am glad I won't have to say good-bye to Peggy. I saw her yesterday afternoon, and she didn't seem any worse, and we were happy together. This morning they sent up to tell me she had died suddenly in the night. She went away 'very peaceably,' her father said. It wasn't the word he meant, but he spoke more truly than he knew. She went 'peaceably' because there was no resentment or fear in her child's heart. To souls like Peggy's, innocent and quiet, God gives the knowledge that Death is but His angel, a messenger of light in whom is no darkness at all.... "I have opened this to tell you a piece of news that has pleased me very much. Do you remember my friend Kirsty Christie and her fiancé Mr. Hamilton? Perhaps you have forgotten them, though I expect the evening you spent at the Christies' house is seared on your memory, and I assure you your 'Cockney accent' has quite spoiled Mrs. Christie for the plain Glasgow of her family circle; well, anyway, Kirsty can't marry Mr. Hamilton until he has got a church, and it so happened that the minister at Langhope, the nearest village to Etterick, was finding his work too much and felt he must resign. Here was my chance! (Oh for the old bad days of patronage!) I don't say I didn't pull strings. I did. I pulled about fifty, and tangled most of them; but the upshot is that they have elected Mr. Hamilton to be minister of Langhope. They are a wise and fortunate people, for he is one of the best; and just think of the fun for me having Kirsty settled near us!