“Oh, father, are you going home?” she said, “and so am I.”
“We will walk together, then; which will be a good thing, as I have something to say to you,” he said.
Elsie had no possible objection. She looked up at him very pleasantly with her soft brown eyes, and he discovered for the first time that his younger daughter had grown into a bonnie creature, prettier than Marion. To be angry with her was impossible, and how did he know that there was anything to be angry about?
“Elsie,” he said, “your mother has been telling me of something you heard me say in my study a long time ago, something that you overheard, which you ought not to have overheard, when you were in the turret, and I did not know you were there.”
Elsie grew a little pale at this unexpected address.
“Oh, father,” she said, “you knew we were always there.”
“Indeed, I knew nothing of the kind. I never supposed for a moment that you would remain to listen to what was said.”
“We never did. Oh, never, never!” cried Elsie, now growing as suddenly red.
“It is evident you did on this occasion. You heard me talking to myself, and now you have remembered and reported what I said.”
“Oh, father!” cried Elsie, with a hasty look of remonstrance, “how can you say I did that?”
He noticed that she had no need to pause, to ask herself what it was. She answered at once.
“It was about the parable. They said you had preached a sermon on it, and I said I thought your mind had been very full of it; because, when Rodie and me were in the turret, we heard you.”
“Oh, there were two of you,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a pucker in his forehead.
“There were always, always two of us then,” said Elsie, with a sudden cloud on hers; “and what you said was that verse about taking your bill and writing fourscore. I did not quite understand it at the time.”
“No, father, for it was a wrong thing,” said Elsie, sinking her voice. “It was cheating: and to praise a man for doing it, is what I cannot understand.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you about that; I will show you what it means,” he said, with the instinct of the expositor, “but not at this moment,” he added, “not just now. Was that all that you thought of, when you heard me say those words to myself?”
Elsie looked up at him, and then she looked all round; a sudden dramatic conflict took place in her. She had thought of that, and yet she had thought of something more than that, but she did not know what the something more was. It had haunted her, but yet she did not know what it was. She looked up and down the street, unconsciously, to find an answer and explanation, but none came. Then she said, faltering a little:--