The Little Minister | Page 5

son remained until Gavin got his call to Thrums.
During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of them as completely
as Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On hearing of Adam's death I
went back to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this, and so
told no one where she was going.
According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was still
a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed her from
the first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret herself was no
scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning bannocks on

the girdle, she decided, when his age was still counted by months, that
the ministry had need of him. In those days the first question asked of a
child was not, "Tell me your name," but "What are you to be?" and one
child in every family replied, "A minister." He was set apart for the
Church as doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent, and the rule held
good though the family consisted of only one boy. From his earliest
days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the ministry as certainly
as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced and marvelled thereat,
though she had made her own puzzle. An enthusiastic mother may bend
her son's mind as she chooses if she begins it once; nay, she may do
stranger things. I know a mother in Thrums who loves "features," and
had a child born with no chin to speak of. The neighbors expected this
to bring her to the dust, but it only showed what a mother can do. In a
few months that child had a chin with the best of them.
Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and, ever
with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived to keep
Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do Margaret's did
better than most, and among the wealthy people who employed
her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of such as were
good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner was spoken of. For
though Margaret had no schooling, she was a lady at heart, moving and
almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they did not perhaps like
her the better for it.
At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever
medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin
watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to do
on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as if the
exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the second to
move the big Bible slightly, to show that the kirk officer, not having
had a university education, could not be expected to know the very spot
on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the minister joined in the

singing more like one countenancing a seemly thing than because he
needed it himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and again after
the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It was noteworthy
that the first prayer lasted longer than all the others, and that to read the
intimations about the Bible-class and the collection elsewhere than
immediately before the last Psalm would have been as sacrilegious as
to insert the dedication to King James at the end of Revelation. Sitting
under a minister justly honoured in his day, the boy was often some
words in advance of him, not vainglorious of his memory, but fervent,
eager, and regarding the preacher as hardly less sacred than the Book.
Gavin was encouraged by his frightened yet admiring mother to saw
the air from their pew as the minister sawed it in the pulpit, and two
benedictions were pronounced twice a Sabbath in that church, in the
same words, the same manner, and simultaneously.
There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its
pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would
rather be good at the high jump than the author of "The Pilgrim's
Progress." That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind. One
afternoon Margaret was at home making a glen-garry for him out of a
piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded in
from school, crying,