It was Miss Bethia's way to take the reins in her own hand wherever she was, and David could not have prevented her if he had tried, which he did not. He could only do as he was bidden. In a much shorter time than Debby would have taken, David thought, all preliminary arrangements were made, and Miss Bethia was busy at work. Little Mary stood on a stool at the end of the table, and gravely imitated her movements with a little iron of her own.

"Now this is what I call a kind of pleasant," said Miss Bethia. "Now let's have a good visit before the children come home."

"Shall I read to you?" said David, a little at a loss as to what might be expected from him in the way of entertainment.

"Well--no. I can read to myself at home, and I would rather talk if you had just as lief."

And she did talk on every imaginable subject, with very little pause, till she came round at last to old Mr Bent's death.

"I'd have given considerable to have gone to the funeral," said she.

"I've known Timothy Bent for over forty years, and I'd have liked to see the last of him. I thought of coming up to ask your papa if he wouldn't take me over when he went, but I thought perhaps your mamma would want to go. Did she?"

No, David said; he had driven his father over.

"Your papa preached, did he?" and then followed a great many questions about the funeral, and the mourners, and the bearers, and then about the text and the sermon. And then she added a hope that he "realised" the value of the privileges he enjoyed above others in having so many opportunities to hear his father preach. And when she said this, David knew that she was going to give him the "serious talking to" which she always felt it her duty to give faithfully to the young people of the families where she visited.

They always expected it. Davie and Jem used to compare notes about these "talks," and used to boast to one another about the methods they took to prevent, or interrupt, or answer them, as the case might be.

But when Miss Bethia spoke about Mr Bent and the funeral, it brought back the sermon and what his father had said to him on his way home, and all the troubled thoughts that had come to him afterwards. So instead of shrugging his shoulders, and making believe very busy with something else, as he had often done under Miss Bethia's threatening lectures, he sat looking out of the window with so grave a face, that she in her turn, made a little pause, of surprise, and watched him as she went on with her work.

"Yes," she went on in a little, "it is a great privilege you have, and that was a solemn occasion, a very solemn occasion--but you did not tell me the text."

David told her the text and a good part of the sermon, too. He told it so well, and grew so interested and animated as he went on, that in a little Miss Bethia set down the flat-iron, and seated herself to listen.

Jem came in before he was through.

"Well! well! I feel just as if I had been to meeting," said Miss Bethia.

"Well done, Davie!" said Jem. "Isn't our Davie a smart boy, Aunt Bethia? I wish Frank could have heard that."

"Yes, so I told papa," said David, gravely.

"It is a great responsibility to have such privileges as you have, boys--" began Miss Bethia.

"As Davie has, you mean, Miss Bethia," said Jem. "He goes with papa almost always--"

"And as you have, too. Take care that you don't neglect them, so that they may not rise up in judgment against you some day--"

But Miss Bethia was obliged to interrupt herself to shake hands with Violet, who came in with her little brother and sister. Jem laughed at the blank look in his sister's face.

"Miss Bethia has commenced your ironing for you," said he.

"Yes--I see. You shouldn't have troubled yourself about it, Miss Bethia."

"I guess I know pretty well by this time what I should do, and what I should let alone," said Miss Bethia, sharply, not pleased with the look on Violet's face, or the heartiness of her greeting. "It was your mother I was thinking of. I expect the heft of Debby's work will fall on her."

"Debby will be back to-morrow or next day, I hope," said Violet. "But it was very kind of you to do it, Miss Bethia, and I will begin in a minute."

"You had better go to work and get supper ready, and get that out of the way; and by that time the starched clothes will be done, and you can do the rest. I expect the children want their supper by this time," said Miss Bethia.

"Yes, I dare say it would be better."

Violet was very good-tempered, and did not feel inclined to resent Miss Bethia's tone of command. And besides, she knew it would do no good to resent it, so she went away to put aside her books, and her out-of-door's dress, and Miss Bethia turned her attention to the boys again.

"Yes, that was a solemn sermon, boys, and, David, I am glad to see that you must have paid good attention to remember it so well. I hope it may do you good, and all who heard it."

"Our Davie won't make a bad preacher himself, will he, Miss Bethia?"

said Jem. "He has about made up his mind to it now."

"His making up his mind don't amount to much, one way or the other,"

said Miss Bethia. "Boys' minds are soon made up, but they ain't apt to stay made up--not to anything but foolishness. That's my belief, and I've seen a good many boys at one time and another."

"But that's not the way with our Davie," said Jem. "You wouldn't find many boys that would remember a sermon so well, and repeat it so well as he does. Now would you, Aunt Bethia?"

"Nonsense, Jem, that's enough," said Davie. "He's chaffing, Aunt Bethia."

"He's entirely welcome," said Miss Bethia, smiling grimly. "Though I don't see anything funny in the idea of David's being a minister, or you either, for that matter."

"Funny! No. Anything but funny! A very serious matter that would be,"

said Jem. "We couldn't afford to have so many ministers in the family, Miss Bethia. I am not going to be a minister. I am going to make a lot of money and be a rich man, and then I'll buy a house for papa, and send Davie's boys to college."

They all laughed.

"You may laugh, but you'll see," said Jem. "I am not going to be a minister. Hard work and poor pay. I have seen too much of that, Miss Bethia."

He was "chaffing" her. Miss Bethia knew it quite well, and though she had said he was entirely welcome, it made her angry because she could not see the joke, and because she thought it was not respectful nor polite on Jem's part to joke with her, as indeed it was not. And besides this was a sore subject with Miss Bethia--the poverty of ministers. She had at one time or another spent a great many of her valuable words on those who were supposed to be influential in the guidance of parish affairs, with a design to prove that their affairs were not managed as they ought to be. There was no reason in the world, but shiftlessness and sinful indifference, to prevent all being made and kept straight between the minister and people as regarded salary and support, she declared, and it was a shame that a man like their minister should find himself pressed or hampered, in providing the comforts-- sometimes the necessaries of life--for his family.

That was putting it strong, the authorities thought and said, but Miss Bethia never would allow that it was too strong, and she never tired of putting it.

"The labourer is worthy of his hire."

"They that serve the temple must live by the temple." And with a house to keep up and his children to clothe and feed, no wonder that Mr Inglis might be troubled many a time when he thought of how they were to be educated, and of what was to become of them in case he should be taken away.

There was no theme on which Miss Bethia was so eloquent as this, and she was eloquent on most themes. She never tired of this one, and answered all excuses and expostulations with a force and sharpness that, as a general thing, silenced, if they did not convince. Whether she helped her cause by this a.s.sertion of its claims, is a question. She took great credit for her faithfulness in the matter, at any rate, and as she had not in the past, so she had made up her mind that she should not in the future be found wanting in this respect.

But it was one thing to tell her neighbours their duty with regard to their minister, and it was quite another thing to listen to a lad like Jem making disparaging remarks as to a minister's possessions and prospects. "Hard work and poor pay," said Jem, and she felt very much like resenting his words, as a reflection on the people of whom she was one. Jem needed putting down.

"Your pa wouldn't say so. He ain't one to wish to serve two masters.

He ain't a mammon worshipper," said Miss Bethia, solemnly.

"No!" said Jem, opening his eyes very wide. "And I don't intend to be one either. I intend to make a good living, and perhaps become a rich man."

"Don't, Jem," said Violet, softly. She meant "Don't vex Miss Bethia,"

as Jem very well knew, but he only laughed and said:

"Don't do what? Become a rich man? or a worshipper of mammon? Don't be silly, Letty."

"Jem's going to be a blacksmith," said Edward. "You needn't laugh. He put a shoe on Mr Strong's old Jerry the other day. I saw him do it."

"Pooh," said Jem. "That's nothing. Anybody could do that. I am going to make a steam-engine some day."