FullReads

But, strange to say, when the day of the voting came, the congregation would by no means have the Reverend Farish Farintosh, though his claims were vehemently urged by the grocer in a speech, with strange blanks in the places where the strong words would have come on other occasions. They elected instead a mere nobody of a young beardless boy, who had been a year or two in a city mission, and whose only recommendation was that he had very successfully worked among the poor of his district.

Fergus Teeman stated his opinions of the new minister, across his counter, often and vehemently.

“The laddie kens nae mair nor a guano-bag. There’s nocht in him but what the spoon pits intil him. He hasna the spunk o’ a rabbit. I tell ye what, we need a man o’ wecht in oor kirk. Come up oot o’ there, boy; ye’re lickin’ that sugar again ! Na, he’ll ken wha he’s preachin’ till, when he stands up afore me. My e’e wull be on him nicht and day. Hae ye no thae bags made yet? Gin they’re no’ dune in five meenits, I’ll knock the heid aff ye !”

The new minister came. He was placed with a great gathering of the clans. The Kirk in the Vennel was full to overflowing the night of his first sermon. Fergus Teeman ‘was there with his notebook, and before the close of the service more than two pages were filled with the measure of the new minister’s iniquity. Then, on the Tuesday after, young Duncan Stewart, seeking to know all his office-bearers, entered like the innocentest of flies the plate-glass-fronted shop where Fergus Teeman lay in wait. There and then, before half a score of interested customers, the elder gave the young minister “sic a through-pittin’ as he never gat in his life afore.” This was the elder’s own story, but the popular opinion was clearly on the side of the minister. It had to be latent opinion, however, for the names of most of the congregation stood in the big books in Fergus Teeman’s shop.

The minister commended himself to his Maker, and went about his own proper business. Every Sabbath, after the sermon, often also before the service, Fergus Teeman was on hand to say his word of reproof to the young minister, to interject the sneering word which, like the poison of asps, turned sweet to bitter. Had Duncan Stewart been older or wiser, he would have showed him to the door. Unfortunately he was just a simple, honest, well-meaning lad from college, trying to do his duty in the Kirk in the Vennel so far as he knew it.

There was an interval of some months before the minister could bring himself to visit again the shop and house of his critical elder. This time he thought that he would try the other door. As yet he had only paid his respects at a distance to Mrs. Teeman. It seemed as if they had avoided each other. He was shown into a room in which a canary was swinging in the window, and a copy of Handel’s Messiah lay on the open piano. This was unlike the account he had heard of Mrs. Teeman. There was a merry voice on the stairs, which said clearly in girlish tones–

“Do go and make yourself decent, father; and then if you are good you may come in and see the minister!”

Duncan Stewart said to himself that something had happened. He was right, and something very important, too. May Teeman was “finished.”

“And I hope you like me,” she had said to her father when she came home. “Sit down, you disreputable old man, till I do your hair. You’re not fit to be seen!”

And, though it would not be credited in the Port, it is a fact that Fergus Teeman sat down without a word. In a week her father was a new man. In a fortnight May kept the key of the cupboard where the square decanter was hidden.