"Well, about the next world. Are you as sure as you seem to be?" Elizabeth did not speak for a moment, then she nodded her head gravely. "Yes," she said, "I'm sure. You can't live with Father and not be sure." "It seems to me so extraordinary. I mean to say, I never heard people talk about such things before. And you all know such chunks of the Bible--even Buff. Why do you laugh?" "At your exasperated tone! You seem to find our knowledge of the Bible almost indecent. Remember, please, that you have never lived before in Scots clerical circles, and that ministers' children are funny people. We are brought up on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism--at least the old-fashioned kind are. In our case, the diet was varied by an abundance of poetry and fairy tales, which have given us our peculiar daftness. But don't you take any interest in the next world?" Arthur Townshend screwed his short-sighted eyes in a puzzled way, as he said: "I don't know anything about it." "As much as anybody else, I daresay," said Elizabeth. "Don't you like that old song I sang to Peggy?-- 'Thy gardens and thy _gallant walks_ Continually are green....' One has a vision of smooth green turf, and ladies 'with lace about their delicate hands' walking serenely; and gentlemen ruffling it with curled wigs and carnation silk stockings. Such a deliciously modish Heaven! Ah well! Heaven will be what we love most on earth. At Etterick----" "Tell me about Etterick," begged Arthur. "It's a place I want very much to see. Aunt Alice adores it." "Who wouldn't! It's only a farmhouse with a bit built on, and a few acres of ground round it but there is a walled garden where old flowers grow carelessly, and the heather comes down almost to the door. And there is a burn--what you would call a stream--that slips all clear and shining from one brown pool to another; and the nearest neighbours are three good miles away, and the peeweets cry, and the bees hum among the wild thyme. You can imagine what it means to go there from a Glasgow suburb. The day we arrive, Father swallows his tea and goes out to the garden, snuffing the wind, and murmuring like Master Shallow, 'Marry, good air.' Then off he goes across the moor, and we are pretty sure that the psalm we sing at prayers that night will be 'I to the hills will lift mine eyes.'" "Etterick belongs to your father?"