The Little Minister | Page 7

was first preached to
Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern
were his admonitions.
"Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you. I'm
ashamed you should have me for a mother."
"God grant, mother," Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to
happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, "that you may
never be ashamed to have me for a son."
"Ah, mother," he would say wistfully, "it is not a great sermon, but do
you think I'm preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I'm carried away
and forget to watch myself."
"The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I dinna say that
because you're my laddie."
"Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it does me good to
hear you."
That it did him good I, who would fain have shared those days with
them, am very sure. The praise that comes of love does not make us
vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in
our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing a
man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn
some of the sin out of him.
Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a great
event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student appeared for

the first time before his mother in his ministerial clothes. He wore the
black silk hat, that was destined to become a terror to evil-doers in
Thrums, and I dare say he was rather puffed up about himself that day.
You would probably have smiled at him.
"It's a pity I'm so little, mother," he said with a sigh.
"You're no what I would call a particularly long man," Margaret said,
"but you're just the height I like."
Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret cried for an hour.
She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it happens, I know
that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in those
days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with mine, I discovered
that while he was showing himself to his mother in his black clothes, I
was on my way back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone to buy a
sand-glass for the school. The one I bought was so like another
Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me thinking of her again all the
way home. This is a matter hardly worth mentioning, and yet it
interests me.
Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in
forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something more
to tell his mother about the weaving town they were going to, or about
the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to him by the
retiring minister. The little room which had become so familiar that it
seemed one of a family party of three had to be stripped, and many of
its contents were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a
little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin, to
teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for a
manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of "I am, thou art,
he is," and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin put
his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The
exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid's when I
die.
"Gavin, Gavin," Margaret said many times In those last days at
Glasgow, "to think it has all come true!"

"Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer of thankfulness,"
she whispered to him when they were taking a final glance at the old
home.
In the bare room they called the house, the little minister and his
mother went on their knees, but, as it chanced, their last word there was
not addressed to God.
"Gavin," Margaret whispered as he took her arm, "do you think this
bonnet sets me?"
CHAPTER III.
THE NIGHT-WATCHERS.
What first struck Margaret in Thrums was the smell of the caddis. The
town smells of caddis no longer, but whiffs of it may be got even now
as one passes the houses of the old, where the lay still swings at little
windows like a great ghost pendulum. To me it is a homely smell,
which I draw in with a great breath, but it was as strange to Margaret as
the weavers themselves,