But, rude as Thomas was, he was
gentleman enough to confine his reply to a snort and a silence. For had
he not chosen his housekeeper upon the strength of those personal
recommendations of the defensive importance of which she was herself
unaware?
Except his own daughters there was no one who mourned so deeply for the
loss of Mr Cowie as Annie Anderson. She had left his church and gone to
the missionars, and there found more spiritual nourishment than Mr
Cowie's sermons could supply, but she could not forget his kisses, or
his gentle words, or his shilling, for by their means, although she did
not know it, Mr Cowie's self had given her a more confiding notion of
God, a better feeling of his tenderness, than she could have had from
all Mr Turnbull's sermons together. What equal gift could a man give?
Was it not worth bookfuls of sound doctrine? Yet the good man, not
knowing this, had often looked back to that interview, and reproached
himself bitterly that he, so long a clergyman of that parish, had no
help to give the only child who ever came to him to ask such help. So,
when he lay on his death-bed, he sent for Annie, the only soul, out of
all his pariah, over which he felt that he had any pastoral cure.
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