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He had not to wait long, when there joined him Gavin MacFadzean, the cobbler, from the foot of Leith Walk, and Alexander Taylour, carriage-builder, elders in the kirk of the Marrow; these, forewarned by John Bairdieson, took their places in silence. To them entered Allan Welsh. Then, last of all, John Bairdieson came in and took his own place.
"But that's nae Christian way for folk to leeve, withoot a woman o' ony kind i' the hoose it's hardly human!" "But I can assure you, Mistress Skirving, that, in spite of what you say, John Bairdieson does very well for us. He is, however, terribly jealous of women coming about. He does not allow one of them within the doors.
"John Bairdieson said John Bairdieson said It has clean gone out of my mind what John Bairdieson said," replied Ralph with much shamefacedness. The old lady looked at him approvingly. "Ye're no a Whig. There's guid bluid in ye," she said, irrelevantly. "Yes, I do remember now," broke in Ralph eagerly. "I remember what John Bairdieson said.
Then juist let us caa' oor cracks, an' say oor says in peace." Thus admonished, Winsome was silent. But for the first time she looked at Ralph with a smile that had half an understanding in it, which made that yonng man's heart leap. He answered quite at random for the next few moments. "About my father yes, he always takes up the Bibles when John Bairdieson preaches." "What!" said the old lady.
The five elders of the Marrow kirk were met for the first time on an equal platform. John Bairdieson opened with prayer. Then he stated the case. The two ex-ministers sat calm and silent, as though listening to a chapter in the Acts of the Apostles. It was a strange scene of equality, only possible and actual in Scotland.
That young man looked gratefully at her, as if she had suddenly dowered him with a fortune. He endeavoured to recollect what it was that he had said and what John Bairdieson had said, but with indifferent success. He could not remember what he was talking about.
This John has always done since the day when some inward communing overcame my father before he began his sermon, and he stood up in the pulpit without saying a word till the people thought that he was in direct communion with the Almighty." "What else did John Bairdieson say to yer faither?" asked Winsome, for the first time that day speaking humanly to Ralph.
"Drive on aboot yer faither an' John Rorrison," she said; "it's verra entertainin'." "Bairdieson," said Winsome, correctingly. Ralph, now reassured that he was interesting Winsome as well, went on more briskly. Winsome had slipped down beside her grandmother, and had laid her arm across her grandmother's knees till the full curve of her breast touched the spare outlines of the elder woman.
Indeed, to start with the acknowledged fact of personal election sometimes gives a man like John Bairdieson an unmistakable advantage. Ralph went to his own room, leaving John Bairdieson listening, as he prayed to be allowed to do, at the door of his father's room. In a minute or two John Bairdieson came up, with a scared face. "Ye're to gang doon, Maister Ralph, an' see yer faither.
"Aweel, can ye no say, or let me say for ye, gin ye be particular, that ye war a wee late oot at nicht seein' a bit lassie or ocht but the doctrine? It wasna anything concernin' the fundamentals o' the Marrow, Maister Ralph, though, surely," continued John Bairdieson, whose elect position did not prevent him from doing his best for the interests of his masters, young and old.
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