And the smile once more took in Miss Girnigo as if she had been a beautiful picture.
By this time Miss Girnigo had somewhat recovered.
"Papa," she said, sharply, "Mr. Denholm is going to be such an acquisition. He is a botanist a Fellow of the Linnæan Society, I understand "
"Of Pittenweem," muttered Gilbert between his teeth.
"And he is going to preach on Sunday. You have had a lot to worry you this week and need a rest. Besides, your best shirts are not ironed not dry indeed. The weather has been so bad!"
"I had made up my mind to preach on Sabbath myself," said Dr. Girnigo, who, though a tyrant untamed without, was held in considerable subjection to the higher power within the bounds of his own house.
"Nonsense, papa I will not allow you to think of such a thing!" cried Miss Girnigo. "Besides, Mr. Denholm is coming to supper to-night, and we will talk botany all the time!"
It is believed that on the way back the Eel studied Bentley, cunningly adjusted on the handlebar, with loops of string to keep the pages from fluttering. (He was a trick-rider of repute.) At any rate, he did not waste his time, and arrived at the manse so full of botanical terms that he had considerable difficulty in making himself intelligible to the maid, who on this occasion, being cleaned up, opened the door to him in state.
This was the beginning of the taming of the tiger. Gilbert preached the next forenoon, and pleased the Doctor greatly by the excellent taste of his opening remarks upon his text, which was, "To preach the gospel and not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to our hand."
The preacher, as a new and original departure, divided his subject into three heads, as followeth: First, "The Duty of Respect for Ecclesiastical Superiors"; second, "The Duty of Christian Liberality" (he had to drag this in neck and crop); and thirdly, "The Supreme Duty of Humility in the Young with respect to their Elders."
While he was looking it over on Sunday morning Gilbert heartily confounded his friend Begg for forgetting the other fifteen divisions of Dr. Girnigo's sermons.
"I could have made a much better appearance if that fellow Begg had had any sense!" he said to himself. "But" (with a sigh) "I must just do the best I can with these."
Nevertheless, Dr. Girnigo considered that Gibby had surpassed himself in his application. He showed how any good that he might do in the parish must not be set down to his credit, but to that of Another who had so long laboured among them; and how that he (the preacher), being but "as one entering upon another man's line of things," it behoved him above all things not to be boastful.
"A very sound address quite remarkable in one so young!" was the Doctor's verdict as he met the Session after the close of Gilbert's first service.
The Session and congregation, however, did not approve quite so highly, having had a surfeit of similar teaching during the past forty years.
But Walter Learmont, senior (sad to tell it of an Elder), winked the sober eye and remarked to his intimates: "Bide a wee he kens his way aboot, thon yin. He wad juist be drawin' the auld man's leg!"
At any rate, certain it is that
after this auspicious beginning Gibby the Eel (M.A.) remained longer in Rescobie than all his predecessors put together.
But it was to Jemima Girnigo that he owed this.
THE GATE OF THE UPPER GARDEN
During this period Gibby hugged himself upon his cleverness, but the time came when he began to have his doubts. What to him was a lightheart prank, an "Eel's trick," like his college jest of squirming secretly under class-room benches, was obviously no jest to this pale-eyed, sharp-featured maiden of one-and-forty.
Jemima Girnigo had never been truly young. Repressed and domineered over as a child, she had been suddenly promoted by her mother's death to the care of a household and the responsibility of training a bevy of younger brothers, all now out in the world and doing for themselves. Her life had grown more and more arid and self-contained. She had nourished her soul on secret penances, setting herself hard household tasks, and doing with only one small, untaught, slatternly maid from the village, in order that her father might be able to assist his sons into careers. She read dry theology to mortify a liking for novels, and shut up her soul from intercourse with her equals, conscious, perhaps, that visitors would infallibly discover and laugh at her father's meannesses and peculiarities.
Only her flowers kept her soul sweet and a human heart beating within that buckram-and-whalebone-fenced bosom.
Then, all suddenly came Gilbert Denholm with his merry laugh, his light-heart ways (which she openly reproved, but secretly loved), his fair curls clustering about his brow, and his way of throwing back his head as if to shake them into place. Nothing so young, so winsome, or so gay had ever set foot within that solemn dreich old manse. It was like a light-heart city beauty coming to change the life and disturb the melancholy of some stern woman-despising hermit. But Jemima Girnigo's case was infinitely worse, in that she was a woman and the disturber of her peace little better than a foolish boy.