Chapter V

It was understood, after that conversation between John and his Uncle William, that the boy should remain at school for a year or two longer, working as a monitor, not in order that he might become a schoolmaster, but so that he might equip his mind with knowledge. Mrs. MacDermott wished her son to become a minister. It would be the proudest day of her life, she said, if she could see John standing in a pulpit, preaching a sermon. Who knew but that he might be one day be the minister of the Ballyards First Presbyterian Church itself, the very church in which his family had worshipped their God for generations.

John, however, had no wish to be a minister.

"You have to be queer and good to be one," he said, "and I'm not as good as all that!"

"Well, mebbe, you'll get better as you get older," Mrs. MacDermott insisted.

"I might get worse," he replied. "It would be a fearful thing to be a minister, and then find out you wanted to commit a sin!"

"Ministers is like ourselves, John," Mrs. MacDermott said, "and I daresay Mr. McCaughan sometimes wants to do wicked things, for all he's such a good man, and has to pray to God many's a while for the strength to resist temptation. That doesn't prove he's not fit to be a minister. It only shows he understands our nature all the more because he has temptations himself!"

But John would not be convinced by her arguments. "I don't know, ma!" he said. "If I wanted to be wicked, I'm afraid I'd be it, so don't ask me to be a minister for I'd mebbe disgrace you with my carryings-on!"

Mrs. MacDermott had been deeply hurt by his refusal to consider the ministry.

"Anybody'd think to hear you," she said, "that you'd made up your mind to lead a sinful life. As if a MacDermott couldn't conquer his sins better nor anybody else!"

His mother, he often observed, spoke more boastfully of the MacDermotts than either his Uncle William or his Uncle Matthew.

John's final, overwhelming retort to her was this: "Would my da have liked me to be a minister?"

"I never knew what your da liked," she retorted; "I only knew what he did!..."

"Do you think he would have liked me to be a minister?" John persisted.

"Mebbe he wouldn't, but he's not here now!..."

"You wouldn't do behind his back what you'd be afraid to do fornenst his face, would you?"

"You've no right to talk to me that way. I'm your mother!..."

"You knew rightly he wouldn't have liked it," John continued, inexorably.

And then Mrs. MacDermott yielded.

"You're your da over again," she complained. "He always had his way in the end, whatever was against him. What _do_ you want to be, then, when you grow up?"

"I don't know yet, ma. I only know the things I don't want to be, and teaching is one of them. And a minister's another! Mebbe I'll know in a wee while!"

He did not like to tell her that in his heart he wished to go in search of adventures. His Uncle Matthew's imaginings had filled his mind with romantic desires, and he longed to leave Ballyards and go somewhere ... anywhere, so long as it was a difficult and distant place ... where he would have to contend with dangers. There were times when he felt that he must instantly pack a bundle of clothes into a red handkerchief ... he could buy one at Conn's, the draper's ... and run away from home and stow himself in the hold of a big ship bound for America or Australia or some place like that ... and was only prevented from doing so by his fear that his mother and uncles would be deeply grieved by his flight. "It would look as if they hadn't been kind to me," he said in remonstrance to himself, "and that wouldn't be fair to them!" But although he did not run away from home, he still kept the strong desire in his heart to go out into a dangerous and bewildering world and seek fortune and adventures. "I want to fight things," he said to himself. "I want to fight things and, ... and win!"

Mixed up with his desire for adventure was a vision of a beautiful girl to whom he should offer his love and service. He could not picture her clearly to himself ... none of the girls in Ballyards bore the slightest resemblance to her. Sometimes, indeed, he thought that this beautiful girl was like Lady Castlederry ... only Lady Castlederry, somehow, although she was so very lovely, had a cold stupid look in her eyes, and he was very certain that this beautiful girl had bright, alert eyes.

There had been a passage of love-making between Aggie Logan and him, conducted entirely by Aggie Logan. She had taken him aside one day, in the middle of a game of "I spy," and had said to him "Will you court me, Johnnie?"

"No," he had replied.

"Do you not love me then?" she enquired.

"No," he said again.

"But I want you to court me," she persisted.

"I don't care what you want," he retorted. "I won't court you because I don't want to court you. I don't like you. You're too much of a girner for me!"

"I'm not a girner," she protested.

"You are. You start crying the minute anything happens to you or if people won't do what you want them to do. I wouldn't marry a girner for the wide world!"

"I won't girn any more if you'll court me," she promised.

"I daresay," he replied skeptically.

She considered for a moment or two. "Well, if you won't court me," she said, "I'll let Andy Cairnduff court me!"

"He can have you," said John, undismayed by the prospect of the schoolmaster's son as a rival.

She stood before him for a little while, without speaking. Then she turned and walked a little distance from him. She stopped, with her back turned towards him, and he knew by the way her head was bent, that she was thinking out a way of retaliating on him. The end of her pinafore was in her mouth!... She turned to him sharply, letting the pinafore fall from her lips, and pointing at him with her finger, she began to laugh shrilly.

"Ha, ha, ha!" she said. "I have you quarely gunked!"

"Gunked!" he exclaimed, unable to see how he had been hoaxed.

"Yes," she answered. "I gunked you nicely. You thought I wanted you to court me, but I was only having you on. Ha, ha, ha!"

He burst out laughing. "I that consoles you," he said; "you're welcome to it!"

Then she ran away and would not play "I spy" or "Tig" any more.

He had not told his mother of that passage of love with Aggie Logan. It did not occur to him to tell anything to his mother. His instinct, indeed, was not to tell things to her, to conceal them from her.