This was a “poser.” Born to a full realization of the vast gulf which providence has fixed between the Highlands and the rest of the world, Janet recognized it as such. Pausing, she leaned on her hoe, anxiously waiting, while Timmins chewed a straw and the cud of reflection.
“Yes,” he slowly answered, “they've been runnin' from 'er this twenty year.” Nodding confirmation to the brilliant rejoinder, Janet fell again to work.
But the elder was in no wise discomposed. Withdrawing one eye from the clouds, he turned it approvingly upon her hoe practice. “She's young yet,” he said, “an' a lass o' her pairts wull no go til the shelf.”
“Christy McDonald,” the elder sententiously replied, “marrit on Neil McNab at fifty. Janet's labor's no going to waste. An' if you were the on'y man i' Zorra, it wad behoove me to conseeder the lassie's prospects i' the next world. Ye're a Methodist.”
“Meanin',” said Timmins, when his mind had grappled with the charge, “as there's no Methodists there?”
Questions of delicacy and certain theological difficulties involved called for reflection, and the elder smoked a full minute on the question before he replied: “No, I wadna go so far as that. It stan's to reason as there's some of 'em there; on'y--I'm no so sure o' their whereaboots.”
Timmins thoughtfully scratched his head ere he came back to the charge. “Meanin' as there's none in 'eaven?”
Again the elder blew a reflective cloud over the merits of the question. “Weel,” he said, delivering himself with slow caution, “if so--it's no on record.”
Again Janet looked up, with defeat perching amid her freckles. “He's got ye this time,” her face said, and the elder's expression of placid satisfaction affirmed the same opinion. But Timmins rose to a sudden inspiration.
“In 'eaven,” he answered, “there's neither marriage nor givin' in marriage.”
“Pish, mon!” the elder snorted. “It's no a question o' marrying; it's a question o' getting theer, an' Janet's no going to do it wi' a Methodist hanging til her skirts.”
Silence fell in the clearing--silence that was broken only by the crash and tinkle of Janet's hoe as she buried Timmins under the clod. A Scotch daughter, she would bide by her father's word. Unaware of his funeral, Timmins himself stood scratching his poll.