FullReads

Then followed the prayer, which seemed new also; and Ebenezer Skinner’s prayers had for some time been well known to the congregation of the Laigh Kirk. The worst of all prayer-mills is the threadbare liturgy which a lazy or an unspiritual man cobbles up for himself. But there seemed a new spirit in Ebenezer’s utterances, and there was a thankful feeling in the kirk of the Townend that day. As they “skailed,” some of the young folk went as far as to say that they hoped that desk would never be filled. But this expression of opinion was discouraged, for it was felt to border on irreverence.

Cracky Carlisle was accidentally at his door when Gib Dally passed on his way home. Cracky had an unspoken question in his eye; but Gib did not respond, for the singing had drawn a kind of spell over him too. So Cracky had to speak plain out before Gib would answer.

“Wha sang the day?” he asked anxiously, hoping that there had been some sore mishap, and that the minister, or even Mrs. Skinner herself, might come humbly chapping at his door to fleech with him to return. And he hardened himself even in the moment of imagination.

“We a’ sang,” said Gib cruelly.

“But wha led?” said the ex-precentor.

“Oh, we had no great miss of you, Cracky,” said Gib, who remembered the airs that the post had many a time given himself, and did not incline to let him off easily in the day of his humiliation. “It was the minister’s wife that led.”

The post lifted his hands, palm outwards, with a gesture of despair.

“Ay, I was jalousing it wad be her,” said he sadly, as he turned into his house. He felt that his occupation and craft were gone, and first and last that the new mistress of the manse was the rock on which he had split.

Mrs. Ebenezer Skinner soon made the acquaintance of the Cairn Edward folk. She was a quick and dainty little person.

“Man, Gib, but she’s a feat bit craitur!” said the shoemaker, watching her with satisfaction from the smiddy door, and rubbing his grimy hands on his apron as if he had been suddenly called upon to shake hands with her.

“Your son was nane so far wrang,” he said to John Scott, the herd, who came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

“Na,” said John; “oor Rob’s heid is screwed the richt way on his shoothers!”

Now, in her rambles the minister’s wife met one and another of the young folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time to come up to the manse for a cup of tea. Then there was singing in the evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not even their parents knew what was coming. But at the first hymn the reason was very obvious. The singing was grand.

“It’ll be what they call a ‘koyer,’ nae doot!” said the shoemaker, who tolerated it solely because he admired the minister’s wife and she had shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor’s desk had departed and all the glory of it. But nobody knows for certain, for the minister’s wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she had a long talk with him. At first Cracky said that he must go home, for he had to be at his work. But, being a minister’s daughter, Mrs. Skinner saw by his “blacks” that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and promptly marched him to the manse to tea. Cracky gives out the books in the choir now, and sings bass, again well pleased with himself. The Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver tea-set by the congregation. He has just been elected Clerk of Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her father was Clerk, to the great advantage of the Kirk of Scotland in these parts.

[My wife, Mary M’Quhirr, wishes me to add to all whom it may concern, “Go thou and do likewise.”]