Gavin went with him to the foot of the manse road; without his
hat, as all Thrums knew before bedtime.

"I begin," Gavin said, as they were parting, "where you leave off,
and my prayer is that I may walk in your ways."

"Ah, Mr. Dishart," the white-haired minister said, with a sigh,
"the world does not progress so quickly as a man grows old. You
only begin where I began."

He left Gavin, and then, as if the little minister's last words
had hurt him, turned and solemnly pointed his staff upward. Such
men are the strong nails that keep the world together.

The twenty-one-years-old minister returned to the manse somewhat
sadly, but when he saw his mother at the window of her bed-room,
his heart leapt at the thought that she was with him and he had
eighty pounds a year. Gaily he waved both his hands to her, and
she answered with a smile, and then, in his boyishness, he jumped
over a gooseberry bush. Immediately afterwards he reddened and
tried to look venerable, for while in the air he had caught sight
of two women and a man watching him from the dyke. He walked
severely to the door, and, again forgetting himself, was bounding
upstairs to Margaret, when Jean, the servant, stood scandalised in
his way.

"I don't think she caught me," was Gavin's reflection, and "The
Lord preserves!" was Jean's.

Gavin found his mother wondering how one should set about getting