We overtook them going home,
and Wilcox explained how much they liked the music. 'Glad
to see you,' I said. 'Glad to see you for any reason,'"
Mr Murchison's eye twinkled. "But they had a great deal
to say about 'the music.'" It was not an effusive form
of felicitation; the minister would have liked it less
if it had been, felt less justified, perhaps, in remembering
about the range on that particular morning. As it was,
he was able to take it with perfect dignity and good
humour, and to enjoy the point against the Wilcoxes with
that laugh of his that did everybody good to hear; so
hearty it was, so rich in the grain of the voice, so full
of the zest and flavour of the joke. The range had been
selected, and their talk of changes had begun with it,
Mr Murchison pointing out the new idea in the boiler and
Dr Drummond remembering his first kitchen stove that
burned wood and stood on its four legs, with nothing
behind but the stove pipe, and if you wanted a boiler
you took off the front lids and put it on, and how
remarkable even that had seemed to his eyes, fresh from
the conservative kitchen notions of the old country. He
had come, unhappily, a widower to the domestic improvements
on the other side of the Atlantic. "Often I used to
think," he said to Mr Murchison, "if my poor wife could
have seen that stove how delighted she would have been!
But I doubt this would have been too much for her
altogether!"
"That stove!" answered Mr Murchison.
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