s before one, and he found
Mistress Brodie waiting for him. "I am glad that you have kept your
tryst," she said. "We will just have a modest bite now, and we can
make up all that is wanting here, at my brother Coll's, a little
later. I have a pleasant invite for yourself. My good sister-in-law
has read some of your father's sermons in the Sunday papers and
magazines, and for their sake she will be glad to see you. I just
promised for you."

"Thank you, I shall be glad to go with you," and it was difficult for
him to disguise how more than glad he was to have this opportunity.

"So then, you will put on the best you have with you--the best is none
too good to meet Thora in."

"Thora?"

"Thora Ragnor, my own niece. She is the bonniest and the best girl in
Scotland, if you will take me as a judge of girls. 'Good beyond the
lave of girls,' and so Bishop Hadley asked her special to dress the
altar for Easter. He knew there would be no laughing and daffing about
the work, if Thora Ragnor had the doing of it."

"Is there any reason to refrain from laughing and daffing while at
that work?"

"At God's altar there should be nothing but prayer and praise. You
know what girls talk and laugh about. If they have not some poor lad
to bring to worship, or to scorn, they have no heart to help their
hands; and the work is done silent and snappy. They are wishing they
were at home, and could get their straight, yellow hair on to
crimping pins, because Laurie or Johnny would be coming to see them,
it being Saturday night."

"Then the Bishop thought your niece would be more reverent?"

"He knew she would. He knew also, that she would not be afraid to be
in the cathedral by herself, she would do the work with her own hands,
and that there would be no giggling and gossiping and no young lads
needed to hold vases and scissors and little balls of twine."

Their "moderate bite" was a pleasant lingering one. They talked of
people in Edinburgh with whom they had some kind of a mutual
acquaintance, and Mistress Brodie did the most of the talking. She was
a charming story-teller, and she knew all the good stories about the
University and its great professors. This day she spent the time
illustrating John Stuart Blackie taking his ease in a dressing gown
and an old straw hat. She made you see the man, and Ian felt refreshed
and cheered by the mental vision. As for Lord Roseberry, he really sat
at their "modest bite" with them. "You know,