Clergy -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Glasgow (Scotland) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
"Yes, it is our small inheritance. Father's people have had it for a
long time. We can only be there for about two months in the summer, but
we often send our run-down or getting-better people for a week or two.
The air is wonderful, but it is dull for them, lacking the attractions
of Millport or Rothesay--the contempt of your town-bred for the
country-dwellers is intense, and laughable. I was going to tell you
about the old man who along with his wife keeps it for us. He has the
softest, most delicious Border voice, and he remarked to me once, 'A' I
ask in the way o' Heaven is juist Etterick--at a raisonable rent.' I
thought the 'raisonable rent' rather nice. Nothing wanted for nothing,
even in the Better Country."
Arthur laughed, and said the idea carried too far might turn Heaven
into a collection of Small Holdings.
"But tell me one thing more. What do you do it for? I mean visiting the
sick, teaching Sunday schools, handing people tracts. Is it because you
think it is your duty as a parson's daughter?"
Elizabeth turned to look at her companion's face to see if he were
laughing; but he was looking quite serious, and anxious for an answer.
"Do you know," she asked him, "what the Scots girl said to the Cockney
tourist when he asked her if all Scots girls went barefoot? No? Then
I'll tell you. She said, 'Pairtly, and pairtly they mind their ain
business.'"
"I deserve it," said Arthur. "I brought it on myself."
"I'm not proud, like the barefoot girl," said Elizabeth. "I'll answer
your questions as well as I can. I think I do it 'pairtly' from duty
and 'pairtly' from love of it. But oh! isn't it best to leave motives
alone? When I go to see Peggy it is a pure labour of love, but when I
go to see fretful people who whine and don't wash I am very
self-conscious about myself. I mean to say, I can't help saying to
myself, 'How nice of you, my dear, to come into this stuffy room and
spend your money on fresh eggs and calf's-foot jelly for this
unpleasant old thing.' Then I walk home on my heels. You've read
_Valerie Upton_? Do you remember the loathly Imogen and her 'radiant
goodness,' and how she stood 'forth in the light'? I sometimes have a
horrid thought that I am rather like that."
"Oh no," said Arthur consolingly. "You will never become a prig. If
your own sense of humour didn't save you I know what would--the
knowledge that _Fish would lawff_."
Their walk was nearly over: they had come to the end of the road where
the Setons' house stood.
"It is nice," said Elizabeth, with a happy sigh, "to think that we are
going in to Father and Buff and tea. Have you got the paint-box all
right? Let me be there when you give it to him."
They walked along in contented silence, until Elizabeth suddenly
laughed, and explained that she had remembered a dream Buff once had
about Heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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