“But that,” said Elsie, with a sigh, “is just the hardest thing! for I’m wanting you, and you’re no wanting me, Rodie! But I’ll say no more about that; Marion says it’s always so, and that laddies and men for a constancy they like their own kind best.” “I didna think Marion had that much sense,” the boy said. “Oh, dinna anger me over again with your conceit,” cried Elsie, “and me in such a good frame of mind, and the bay so bonnie, and something so different in my thoughts.” Rodie settled himself on the rude bench, as though preparing to endure the inevitable: he took his hands out of his pockets and began to drum a faint tune upon the rustic table. The attitude which many a lover, many a husband, many a resigned male victim of the feminine reproaches from which there is no escape, has assumed for ages past, came by nature to this small boy. He dismissed every kind of interest or intelligence from his face. If he had been thirty, he could not have looked more blank, more enduring, more absolutely indifferent. Since he could not get away from her, she must have her say. It would not last for ever, neither could it penetrate beyond the very surface of the ear and of the mind. He assumed his traditional attitude by inheritance from long lines of forefathers. And perhaps it was well that Elsie’s attention was not concentrated on him, or it is quite possible that she might have assumed the woman’s traditional attitude, which is as well defined as the man’s. But she was fortunately at the visionary age, and had entered upon her poetry, as he had entered into the dominion of “his laddies.” Her eye strayed over the vast expanse spread out before her, and the awe of the beauty, and the vast calm of God came over her heart. “Rodie, I want to speak to you of something. It’s long past, and it has nothing to do with you or me. Rodie, do you mind yon afternoon, when we were shut up in the turret, and heard papa studying his sermon?” “What’s about that? You’ve minded me of it many a time: but if I was to be always minding like you, what good would that do?” “I wanted to ask you, Rodie--sometimes you mind better than me, sometimes not so well. Do you mind what he was saying? I want to be just sure for once, and then never to think upon it again.” “What does it matter what he was saying? It was just about one of the parables.” I am afraid the parables were just “a thing in the Bible” to Rodie. He did not identify them much, or think what they meant, or wherein one differed from another. This, I need not say, was not for want of teaching: perhaps it was because of too much teaching, which sometimes has a similar effect. “I mind,” he said with a laugh, “we were just that crampit, sitting so long still, that we couldn’t move.” “Yes, yes,” said Elsie, “but I want to remember quite clear what it was he said.”