Just ye try going, and I'll get mad, and Mary will cry,
and ye will stay at home, juist like I did."
There was a fear deep in Dannie's soul that some day Jimmy would
fulfill this long-time threat of his. "I dinna think there is ony
place in all the world so guid as the place ye own," Dannie said
earnestly. "I dinna care a penny what anybody else has, probably
they have what they want. What _I_ want is the land that my feyther
owned before me, and the house that my mither kept. And they'll
have to show me the place they call Eden before I'll give up that
it beats Rainbow Bottom--Summer, Autumn, or Winter. I dinna give
twa hoops fra the palaces men rig up, or the thing they call
`landscape gardening'. When did men ever compete with the work of God?
All the men that have peopled the earth since time began could have
their brains rolled into one, and he would stand helpless before
the anatomy of one of the rats in these bags. The thing God does is
guid enough fra me."
"Why don't you take a short cut to the matin'-house?" inquired Jimmy.
"Because I wad have nothing to say when I got there," retorted
Dannie. "I've a meetin'-house of my ain, and it juist suits me; and
I've a God, too, and whether He is spirit or essence, He suits me.
I dinna want to be held to sharper account than He faces me up to,
when I hold communion with mesel'. I dinna want any better meetin'-
house than Rainbow Bottom. I dinna care for better talkin' than the
`tongues in the trees'; sounder preachin' than the `sermons in
the stones'; finer readin' than the books in the river; no, nor
better music than the choir o' the birds, each singin' in its ain
way fit to burst its leetle throat about the mate it won, the nest
they built, and the babies they are raising.
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