The Imperialist | Page 6

do five dollars worth of business at the store all day
yesterday, and he's as cross as two sticks."
"Oh, that's all right." Lorne jingled his pocket and Oliver took a
fascinated step toward him. "I made thirty cents this morning,
delivering papers for Fisher. His boy's sick. I did the North Ward--took
me over'n hour. Guess I can go all right, can't I?"

"Why, yes, I suppose you can," said his mother. The others were dumb.
Oliver hunched his shoulders and kicked at the nearest thing that had
paint on it. Abby clung to the pump handle and sobbed aloud. Lorne
looked gloomily about him and went out. Making once more for the
back fence, he encountered Alexander in the recognized family retreat.
"Oh, my goodness!" he said, and stopped. In a very few minutes he was
back in the kitchen, followed sheepishly by Alexander, whose grimy
face expressed the hope that beat behind his little waistcoat.
"Say, you kids," he announced, "Alec's got four cents, an' he says he'll
join up. This family's going to celebrate all right. Come on down
town."
No one could say that the Murchisons were demonstrative. They said
nothing, but they got their hats. Mrs Murchison looked up from her
occupation.
"Alec," she said, "out of this house you don't go till you've washed your
face. Lorne, come here," she added in a lower voice, producing a bunch
of keys. "If you look in the right-hand corner of the top small drawer in
my bureau you'll find about twenty cents. Say nothing about it, and
mind you don't meddle with anything else. I guess the Queen isn't
going to owe it all to you."

Chapter II
"We've seen changes, Mr Murchison. Aye. We've seen changes."
Dr Drummond and Mr Murchison stood together in the store door, over
which the sign "John Murchison: Hardware," had explained thirty years
of varying commercial fortune. They had pretty well begun life
together in Elgin. John Murchison was one of those who had listened to
Mr Drummond's trial sermon, and had given his vote to "call" him to
the charge. Since then there had been few Sundays when, morning and
evening, Mr Murchison had not been in his place at the top of his pew,
where his dignified and intelligent head appeared with the isolated

significance of a strong individuality. People looked twice at John
Murchison in a crowd; so did his own children at home. Hearing some
discussion of the selection of a premier, Alec, looking earnestly at him
once said, "Why don't they tell Father to be it?" The young minister
looked twice at him that morning of the trial sermon, and asked
afterward who he was. A Scotchman, Mr Drummond was told, not very
long from the old country, who had bought the Playfair business on
Main Street, and settled in the "Plummer Place," which already had a
quarter of a century's standing in the annals of the town. The Playfair
business was a respectable business to buy; the Plummer Place, though
it stood in an unfashionable outskirt, was a respectable place to settle in;
and the minister, in casting his lot in Elgin, envisaged John Murchison
as part of it, thought of him confidently as a "dependance," saw him
among the future elders and office-bearers of the congregation, a man
who would be punctual with his pew-rent, sage in his judgements, and
whose views upon church attendance would be extended to his family.
So the two came, contemporaries, to add their labour and their lives to
the building of this little outpost of Empire. It was the frankest transfer,
without thought of return; they were there to spend and be spent within
the circumference of the spot they had chosen, with no ambition
beyond. In the course of nature, even their bones and their memories
would enter into the fabric. The new country filled their eyes; the new
town was their opportunity, its destiny their fate. They were altogether
occupied with its affairs, and the affairs of the growing Dominion, yet
obscure in the heart of each of them ran the undercurrent of the old
allegiance. They had gone the length of their tether, but the tether was
always there. Thus, before a congregation that always stood in the early
days, had the minister every Sunday morning for thirty years besought
the Almighty, with ardour and humility, on behalf of the Royal Family.
It came in the long prayer, about the middle. Not in the perfunctory
words of a ritual, but in the language of his choice, which varied
according to what he believed to be the spiritual needs of the reigning
House, and was at one period, touching certain of its members, though
respectful, extremely candid. The General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland,