The Taylors accompanied them part of the way home. Mr. Taylor's humour was at its brightest, and with many sly glances at Mr. Townshend he adjured Elizabeth to be a "good wee miss" and not think of leaving "Papa." Finding the response to his witticisms somewhat disappointing, he changed the subject, and laying a hand on Buff's shoulder said, "Ye'll be glad to hear, Mr. Townshend, that this boy is going to follow his Papa and be a minister." Buff had been "stotting" along the road, very far away from Glasgow and Mr. Taylor and the Sabbath Day. He had been Cyrano de Bergerac, and was wiping his trusty blade after having accounted for his eighty-second man, when he was brought rudely back to the common earth. He turned a dazed eye on the speaker. What was he saying? "This boy is going to be a minister." And he had been Cyrano! The descent was too rapid. "Me?" cried Buff. "Not likely! I'm going to fight, and kill _hundreds of people_." "Oh, my, my," said Mrs. Taylor. "That's not a nice way for a Christian little boy to speak. That's like a wee savage!" Buff pulled his sister's sleeve. "Was Cyrano a savage?" he whispered. Elizabeth shook her head. "Well," said Buff, looking defiantly at Mrs. Taylor, "Cyrano fought a hundred men one after another and _he_ wasn't a savage." Mrs. Taylor shook her head sadly. "Yer Papa would be sorry to think ye read about sich people." "Haw!" cried Buff, "it was Father read it to me himself--didn't he Lizbeth?--and he laughed--he _laughed_ about him fighting the hundred men." They had come to the end of the street where the Taylors lived, and they all stopped for a minute, Buff flushed and triumphant, Mrs. Taylor making the bugles of her Sabbath bonnet shake with disapproval, and Mr. Taylor still brimful of humour. "It's as well we're leavin' this bloodthirsty young man, Mrs. Taylor," he said. "It's as well we're near home. He might feel he wanted to kill us." (Buff's expression was certainly anything but benign.) Elizabeth shook hands with her friends, and said: "It would be so nice if you would spend an evening with us. Not this week--perhaps Tuesday of next week?" The Taylors accepted with effusion. There was nothing they enjoyed so much as spending an evening, and this Elizabeth knew. "That'll be something to look forward to," Mr. Taylor said; and his wife added, "Ay, if we're here and able, but ye niver can tell." As they walked on Elizabeth looked at her companion's face and laughed. "Mr. Taylor is a queer little man," she said. "He used to worry me dreadfully. I simply couldn't stand his jokes--and then I found out that he wasn't the little fool I had been thinking him, and I was ashamed. He is rather a splendid person." Mr. Townshend and Buff both looked at her.