[Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers by Ian Maclaren]@TWC D-Link bookKate Carnegie and Those Ministers CHAPTER VIII 6/12
He showed me much courtesy while I lived in the Cottage, although I did not belong to his communion, and as my imagination reconstructs the old parish of a winter night by the fire, I miss him as he used to be on the road, in the people's homes, in his pulpit, among his books--ever an honourable and kind-hearted gentleman. One evening a woman came into Donald Menzies's barn just before the hour of service, elderly, most careful in her widow's dress, somewhat austere in expression, but very courteous in her manner.
No one recognised her at the time, but she was suspected to be the forerunner of the Carnegie household, and Donald offered her a front seat.
She thanked him for his good-will, but asked for a lower place, greatly delighting him by a reference to the parable wherein the Master rebuked the ambitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats.
Their accent showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in this place.
So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard her reply: "It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very rigid and with closed lips.
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