“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.

A tall, slim girl with an eager face, and little wisps of fair hair curling about her head, came into the room and frankly held out her hand to the minister.

“You are Mr. Stewart.  I am glad to see you.”

Whereupon they fell a-talking, and in a twinkling were in the depths of a discussion upon poetry.  Duncan Stewart was so intent on watching the swift changes of expression across the face of this girl, that he made several flying shots in giving his opinions of certain poems—­for which he was utterly put to shame by May Teeman, who instantly fastened him to his random opinions and asked him to explain them.

To them entered another Fergus Teeman to the militant critic of the Sabbath morning whom Duncan knew too well.

“Sit down, father.  Make yourself at home,” said his daughter.  “I am just going to play something.”  And so her father sat down not ill-pleased, and, according to her word, tried to make himself at home, till the hours slipped away, and Duncan Stewart was induced to stay for tea.

“He’s mellowin’ fine, like a good blend o’ Glenlivet!” said the grocer next day, in his shop. (He did not speak nearly so loud as he used to do.) “He’s comin’ awa’ brawly.  I’ll no’ say but what I was owre sharp wi’ the lad at first.  He’ll mak’ a sound minister yet, gin he was a kennin’ mair spunky.  Hear till me, yon was a graun’ sermon we got yesterday.  It cowed a’!  Man, Lochnaw, he touched ye up fine aboot pride and self-conceit!”

* * * * *

“What’s at the bottom o’ a’ that, think ye, na?” asked Lochnaw that night as his wife and he dodged home at the rate of five miles an hour behind the grey old pony with the shaggy fetlocks.

“Ye cuif,” said his wife; “that dochter o’ his ’ill be gaun up to the manse.  That boardin’-schule feenished her, an’ she’s feenished the minister!”

“Davert! what a woman ye are!” said Lochnaw, in great admiration.

III

THE LITTLE LAME ANGEL