Chapter 45

TALK OF A LITTLE MAID SINCE GROWN TALL.

My scholars have a game they call "The Little Minister," in which
the boys allow the girls as a treat to join. Some of the
characters in the real drama are omitted as of no importance--the
dominie, for instance--and the two best fighters insist on being
Dow and Gavin. I notice that the game is finished when Dow dives
from a haystack, and Gavin and the earl are dragged to the top of
it by a rope. Though there should be another scene, it is only a
marriage, which the girls have, therefore, to go through without
the help of the boys. This warns me that I have come to an end of
my story for all except my little maid. In the days when she sat
on my knee and listened it had no end, for after I told her how
her father and mother were married a second time she would say,
"And then I came, didn't I? Oh, tell me about me!" So it happened
that when she was no higher than my staff she knew more than I
could write in another book, and many a time she solemnly told me
what I had told her, as--

"Would you like me to tell you a story? Well, it's about a
minister, and the people wanted to be bad to him, and then there
was a flood, and a flood is lochs falling instead of rain, and so
of course he was nearly drownded, and he preached to them till
they liked him again, and so they let him marry her, and they like
her awful too, and, just think! it was my father; and that's all.
Now tell me about grandmother when father came home."

I told her once again that Margaret never knew how nearly Gavin
was driven from his kirk. For Margaret was as one who goes to bed
in the daytime and wakes in it, and is not told that there has
been a black night while she slept. She had seen her son leave the
manse the idol of his people, and she saw them rejoicing as they
brought him back. Of what occurred at the Jaws, as the spot where
Dow had saved two lives is now called, she learned, but not that
these Jaws snatched him and her from an ignominy more terrible
than death, for she never knew that the people had meditated
driving him from his kirk. This Thrums is bleak and perhaps
forbidding, but there is a moment of the day when a setting sun
dyes it pink, and the people are like their town. Thrums was never
colder in times of snow than were his congregation to their
minister when the Great Rain began, but his fortitude rekindled
their hearts. He was an obstinate minister, and love had led him a
dance, but in the hour of trial he had proved himself a man.

When Gavin reached the manse, and saw not only his mother but
Babbie, he would have kissed them both; but Babbie could only say,
"She does not know," and then run away crying. Gavin put