"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified. There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we didn't understand plain English.
Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we--the church--might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric pronunciation of the word.
It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland--Nature itself seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath--and it continued raining for four whole days. The rain came down steadily and mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole landscape into a big damp gray blanket. "I suppose," said Mrs. Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much longer."
"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent friends," said Palestrina. "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."
It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the Presbyterian Kirk. I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland. He went to the village church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.
"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill, where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture. He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by entering a Presbyterian kirk.
Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an ass, Ellicomb." But even on Monday morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the effects of his churchgoing.