But I'd got more or less used to it," she confessed. "The
man's well enough in some ways. Dear knows there would
be a pair of them--one's as much of a muddler as the
other! And anybody can see with half an eye that Advena
likes him. It hasn't turned out as I expected, that's a
fact, John, and I'm just very much annoyed."
"I'm not best pleased about it myself," said John Murchison,
expressing, as usual, a very small proportion of the
regret that he felt, "but I suppose they know their own
business."
Thus, in their different ways, did these elder ones also
acknowledge their helplessness before the advancing event.
They could talk of it in private and express their
dissatisfaction with it, and that was all they could do.
It would not be a matter much further turned over between
them at best. They would be shy of any affair of sentiment
in terms of speech, and from one that affected a member
of the family, self-respect would help to pull them the
other way. Mrs Murchison might remember it in the list
of things which roused her vain indignation; John Murchison
would put it away in the limbo of irremediables that were
better forgotten. For the present they had reached the
church door.
Mrs Murchison saw with relief that Dr Drummond occupied
his own pulpit, but if her glance had gone the length of
three pews behind her she would have discovered that Hugh
Finlay made one of the congregation.
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