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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Daft Days, by Neil Munro
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Daft Days
+
+
+Author: Neil Munro
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2015  [eBook #49906]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAFT DAYS***
+
+
+This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
+
+                         _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_.
+
+                               * * * * *
+
+                  UNIFORM EDITION, Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
+
+DOOM CASTLE.  A ROMANCE.
+
+    “He may now be ranked with absolute confidence among the small
+    company of novelists whose work really counts as
+    literature.”—_Pall Mall Gazette_.
+
+    “Inspires reader and reviewer with deep gratitude and
+    admiration.”—_Spectator_.
+
+JOHN SPLENDID.  THE TALE OF A POOR GENTLEMAN AND THE LITTLE WARS OF
+LORNE.
+
+    “A masterly and most interesting novel.”—_Times_.
+
+    “An achievement of rare merit and distinction.”—_Pall Mall
+    Gazette_.
+
+THE LOST PIBROCH, AND OTHER SHEILING STORIES.
+
+Mr ANDREW LANG says: “In ‘The Lost Pibroch’ we meet genius as obvious
+and undeniable as that of Mr Kipling.  Mr Munro’s powers are directed
+to old Highland life, and he does what genius alone can do—he makes it
+alive again, and makes our imagination share its life—his knowledge
+being copious, original, at first hand.”
+
+CHILDREN OF TEMPEST.
+
+    “More than a good story.  It is a downright good book, realistic,
+    powerful, and effective, absolutely perfect in its picturing of
+    the simple, sturdy seafolk of Uist and the Outer Isles of the
+    West.”—_Daily Telegraph_.
+
+SHOES OF FORTUNE.
+
+    “Readable from cover to cover.”—_Evening Standard_.
+
+GILIAN THE DREAMER.
+
+    “We earnestly hope Mr Munro will give us more of such
+    things.”—_Liverpool Courier_.
+
+                               * * * * *
+
+            WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
+
+                             _The Daft Days_
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    BY
+                                NEIL MUNRO
+
+                                AUTHOR OF
+             ‘JOHN SPLENDID,’ ‘THE LOST PIBROCH,’ ETC., ETC.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            _SHILLING EDITION_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                        WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+                           EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+                                  MCMIX
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                          _All Rights reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+THE town’s bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer
+little jolts and pauses, as if Wanton Wully Oliver, the ringer, had been
+jovial the night before.  A blithe New-Year-time bell; a droll, daft,
+scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarums, no solemn reminders that
+commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think
+upon things undone, the brevity of days and years, the parting of good
+company, but a cheery ditty—“boom, boom, ding-a-dong boom, boom ding,
+hic, ding-dong,” infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish
+gaiety.  The burgh town turned on its pillows, drew up its feet from the
+bed-bottles, last night hot, now turned to chilly stone, rubbed its eyes,
+and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come.  It cast
+a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosy beds.
+“Wanton Wully’s on the ran-dan!” said the folk, and rose quickly, and ran
+to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on window-ledges
+cushioned deep in snow.  The children hugged themselves under the
+blankets, and told each other in whispers it was not a porridge morning,
+no, nor Sunday, but a breakfast of shortbread, ham and eggs; and behold!
+a beautiful loud drum, careless as ’twere a reveille of hot wild youths,
+began to beat in a distant lane.  Behind the house of Dyce the lawyer, a
+cock that must have been young and hearty crew like to burst; and at the
+stables of the post-office the man who housed his horses after bringing
+the morning mail through night and storm from a distant railway station
+sang a song,—
+
+   “A damsel possessed of great beauty
+      Stood near by her own father’s gate:
+   The gallant hussars were on duty;
+      To view them this maiden did wait.
+   Their horses were capering and prancing,
+      Their accoutrements shone like a star;
+   From the plains they were quickly advancing,—
+      She espied her own gallant hussar.”
+
+“Mercy on us! six o’clock!” cried Miss Dyce, with a startled jump from
+her dreams to the floor of her bedroom.  “Six o’clock on the New Year’s
+morning, and I’ll warrant that randy Kate is sound asleep yet,” she said,
+and quickly clad herself and went to the head of the stair and cried,
+“Kate, Kate! are ye up yet, Kate?  Are ye hearing me, Kate MacNeill?”
+
+From the cavern dark of the lower storey there came back no answer.
+
+She stood with a curious twirly wooden candlestick in her hand in the
+midst of a house that was dead dumb and desperate dark, and smelled
+deliciously of things to eat.  Even herself, who had been at the making
+of most of them the day before, and had, by God’s grace, still much of a
+child’s appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at
+this air of a celestial grocery—of plum-puddings and currant-buns, apples
+and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly sweet we
+call Black Man,—her face lit rosily by the candle lowe, a woman small and
+soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a briskness of
+body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years.  What they
+were I will never tell you; but this I’ll say, that even if they had been
+eighty she was the kind to cheerily dance quadrille.  The daft bell, so
+plainly in the jovial mood of Wanton Wully Oliver, infected her: she
+smiled to herself in a way she had when remembering droll things or just
+for simple jollity, and whoever saw Bell Dyce smile to herself had never
+the least doubt after that she was a darling.  Over the tenements of the
+town the song of the bell went rollicking, and in its hiccupping pauses
+went wonderfully another sound far, far removed in spirit and
+suggestion—the clang of wild geese calling: the “honk, honk” of the
+ganders and the challenge of their ladies come down adrift in the snow
+from the bitter north.
+
+But there was no answer from the maid in the kitchen.  She had rolled
+less deliberately than was usual from her blankets to the summons of the
+six o’clock bell, and already, with the kitchen window open, her
+bounteous form surged over the two sashes that were always so
+conveniently low and handy for a gossip with any friendly passer-by on
+the pavement.  She drank the air of the clean chill morning dark, a heady
+thing like old Tom Watson’s autumn ale, full of the sentiment of the daft
+days.  She tilted an ear to catch the tune of the mail-boy’s song that
+now was echoing mellow from the cobwebbed gloom of the stable stalls, and
+making a snowball from the drift of the window-ledge she threw it,
+womanwise, aimlessly into the street with a pretence at combat.  The
+chill of the snow stung sweet in the hot palm of her, for she was young
+and strong.
+
+“Kate, you wretch!” cried a voice behind her.  She drew in her head, to
+find her mistress in the kitchen with the candlestick in her hand.
+
+“Oh, m’em,” cried the maid, no way abashed, banging up the window and
+hurriedly crushing her more ample parts under the final hooks and eyes of
+her morning wrapper—“oh, m’em, what a start you gave me!  I’m all in a
+p-p-palpitation.  I was just takin’ one mouthful of air and thinkin’ to
+myself yonder in the Gaelic that it was time for me to be comin’ in and
+risin’ right.”
+
+“A Happy New Year to you, Kate MacNeill,” said the mistress, taking her
+hand.
+
+“Just that, just that! and the same to you yourself, Miss Dyce.  I’m
+feeling fine; I’m that glad with everything,” said the maid, in some
+confusion at this unusual relation with her mistress.  She shook the
+proffered hand rapidly from side to side as if it were an egg-switch.
+
+“And see and get the fires on quick now, like a good lass.  It would
+never do to be starting the New Year late,—it would be unlucky.  I was
+crying to you yonder from the stair-head, and wondering if you were ill,
+that you did not answer me so quickly as you do for ordinar’.”
+
+“Ill, Miss Dyce!” cried the maid astounded.  “Do you think I’m daft to be
+ill on a New Year’s day?”
+
+“After yon—after yon shortbread you ate yesterday I would not have
+wondered much if you were,” said Miss Dyce, shaking her head solemnly.
+“I’m not complaining, but, dear me! it was an awful lump; and I thought
+it would be a bonny-like thing too, if our first-foot had to be the
+doctor.”
+
+“Doctor!  I declare to goodness I never had need of a doctor to me since
+Dr Macphee in Colonsay put me in order with oil and things after I had
+the measles,” exclaimed the maid, as if mankind were like wag-at-the-wa’
+clocks and could be guaranteed to go right for years if you blew through
+them with a pair of bellows, or touched their works with an oily feather.
+
+“Never mind about the measles just now, Kate,” said Miss Dyce, with a
+meaning look at the blackout fire.
+
+“Neither I was mindin’ them, m’em,—I don’t care a spittle for them; it’s
+so long ago I would not know them if I saw them; I was just—”
+
+“But get your fire on.  You know we have a lot to do to-day to get
+everything nice and ready for my nephew who comes from America with the
+four o’clock coach.”
+
+“America!” cried the maid, dropping a saucepan lid on the floor in her
+astonishment.  “My stars!  Did I not think it was from Chickagoo?”
+
+“And Chicago is in America, Kate,” said her mistress.
+
+“Is it? is it?  Mercy on me, how was Kate to know?  I only got part of my
+education,—up to the place where you carry one and add ten.  America!
+Dear me, just fancy!  The very place that I’m so keen to go to.  If I had
+the money, and was in America—”
+
+It was a familiar theme; Kate had not got fully started on it when her
+mistress fled from the kitchen and set briskly about her morning affairs.
+
+And gradually the household of Dyce the lawyer awoke wholly to a day of
+unaccustomed stillness and sound, for the deep snow piled in the street
+and hushed the traffic of wheel, and hoof, and shoe, but otherwise the
+morning was cheerful with New Year’s day noise.  For the bell-ringing of
+Wanton Wully was scarcely done, died down in a kind of brazen chuckle,
+and the “honk, honk” of the wild geese sped seaward over gardens and back
+lanes, strange wild music of the north, far-fetched and undomestic,—when
+the fife band shrilly tootled through the town to the tune of “Hey,
+Johnny Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?”  Ah, they were the proud, proud men,
+their heads dizzy with glory and last night’s wine, their tread on air.
+John Taggart drummed—a mighty drummer, drunk or sober, who so loved his
+instrument he sometimes went to bed with it still fastened to his neck,
+and banged to-day like Banagher, who banged furiously, never minding the
+tune much, but happy if so be that he made noise enough.  And the fifers
+were not long gone down the town, all with the wrong step but Johnny
+Vicar, as his mother thought, when the snow was trampled under the feet
+of playing children, and women ran out of their houses, and crossed the
+street, some of them, I declare, to kiss each other, for ’tis a fashion
+lately come, and most genteel, grown wonderfully common in Scotland.
+Right down the middle of the town, with two small flags in his hat and
+holly in the lapel of his coat, went old Divine the hawker, with a great
+barrow of pure gold, crying “Fine Venetian oranges! wha’ll buy sweet
+Venetian oranges?  Nane o’ your foreign trash.  Oranges!  Oranges!—rale
+New Year oranges, three a penny; bloods, a bawbee each!”
+
+The shops opened just for an hour for fear anybody might want anything,
+and many there were, you may be sure, who did, for they had eaten and
+drunken everything provided the night before—which we call Hogmanay,—and
+now there were currant-loaves and sweety biscuits to buy; shortcake,
+sugar and lemons, ginger cordial for the boys and girls and United
+Presbyterians, boiled ham for country cousins who might come unexpected,
+and P. & A. MacGlashan’s threepenny mutton-pies (twopence if you brought
+the ashet back), ordinarily only to be had on fair-days and on Saturdays,
+and far renowned for value.
+
+Miss Minto’s Millinery and Manteau Emporium was discovered at daylight to
+have magically outlined its doors and windows during the night with
+garlands and festoons of spruce and holly, whereon the white rose bloomed
+in snow; and Miss Minto herself, in a splendid crimson cloak down to the
+heels, and cheeks like cherries, was standing with mittens and her five
+finger-rings on, in the middle door, saying in beautiful gentle English
+“A Happy New Year” to every one who passed—even to George Jordon, the
+common cowherd, who was always a little funny in his intellects, and,
+because his trousers were bell-mouthed and hid his feet, could never
+remember whether he was going to his work or coming from it, unless he
+consulted the Schoolmaster.  “The same to you, m’em, excuse my hands,”
+said poor George, just touching the tips of her fingers.  Then, because
+he had been stopped and slewed a little from his course, he just went
+back the way he had come.
+
+Too late got up the red-faced sun, too late to laugh at Wanton Wully’s
+jovial bell, too late for Taggart’s mighty drumming, but a jolly winter
+sun,—’twas all that was wanted among the chimneys to make the day
+complete.
+
+First of all to rise in Dyce’s house, after the mistress and the maid,
+was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.
+
+And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back
+he was known as Cheery Dan.
+
+“Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went
+with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the
+water.  It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which, men
+never age, comes from high mountain bens.
+
+“That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers.  “I’ll
+see ye far enough first!”  And contented himself with a slighter wash
+than usual, and shaving.  As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his
+habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was
+
+   “Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,”
+
+with not much tone but a great conviction,—a tall, lean, clean-shaven man
+of over fifty, with a fine long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen grey eyes, and
+plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open it
+was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands into
+them.  And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of his
+pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest of
+the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the
+weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he
+went upstairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a
+pencilled note, in which he wrote—
+
+                           A NEW YEAR’S DAY PRESENT
+                                FOR A GOOD BOY
+                                     FROM
+                       AN UNCLE WHO DOES NOT LIKE CATS.
+
+He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for
+its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was
+seen the King’s highway.  “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself.
+“They have made an extraordinary job of it.  Very nice indeed, but just a
+shade ladylike.  A stirring boy would prefer fewer fal-lals.”
+
+There was little indeed to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in
+that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its
+looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover’s-knots, its bower-like
+bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of pot-pourri
+and lavender.  A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when
+she was in Miss Mushet’s seminary, hung over the mantelpiece enjoining
+all beholders to
+
+                             WATCH AND PRAY.
+
+Mr Dyce put both hands into his trousers pockets, bent a little, and
+heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter.  “Man’s whole duty, according to
+Bell Dyce,” he said, “‘Watch and Pray’; but they do not need to have the
+lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I’ll warrant.  Yon’s
+the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the
+prayer.  ‘Watch and Pray’—h’m!  It should be Watch _or_ Pray—it clearly
+cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well
+expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time.”
+
+He was humming “Star of Peace”—for the tune he started the morning with
+usually lasted him all day,—and standing in the middle of the floor
+contemplating with amusement the ladylike adornment of the room prepared
+for his Chicago nephew, when a light step fell on the attic stairs, and a
+woman’s voice cried, “Dan!  Dan Dyce!  Coo-ee!”
+
+He did not answer.
+
+She cried again after coming up a step or two more, but still he did not
+answer.  He slid behind one of the bed-curtains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+ALISON DYCE came lightly up the rest of the stair, whistling blithely, in
+spite of her sister Bell’s old notion that whistling women and crowing
+hens are never canny.  She swept into the room.  People in the town—which
+has a forest of wood and deer behind it—used to say she had the tread and
+carriage of a young wild roe, and I can well assure you she was the girl
+to walk with on a winter day!  She had in her hand a book of poems called
+‘The Golden Treasury’ and a spray of the herb called Honesty, that
+thrives in poor men’s gardens.  Having laid them down on the table
+without noticing her brother’s extraordinary Present for a Good Boy, she
+turned about and fondled things.  She smoothed the bed-clothes as if they
+covered a child, she patted the chair-backs with an air of benediction,
+she took cushions to her breast like one that cuddled them, and when she
+touched the mantel-piece ornaments they could not help it but must start
+to chime.  It was always a joy to see Alison Dyce redding-up, as we say;
+though in housewifery, like sewing, knitting, and cooking, she was only a
+poor second to her sister Bell.  She tried, from duty, to like these
+occupations, but, oh dear! the task was beyond her: whatever she had
+learned from her schooling in Edinburgh and Brussels, it was not the
+darning of hose and the covering of rhubarb-tarts.
+
+Her gift, said Bell, was management.
+
+Tripping round the little attic, she came back by-and-by to the table at
+the window to take one last wee glimpse inside ‘The Golden Treasury,’
+that was her own delight and her notion of happy half-hours for the ideal
+boy, and her eye fell for the first time on the pea-sling and the note
+beside it.
+
+She read, and laughed, and upon my word, if laughter like Ailie Dyce’s
+could be bought in perforated rolls, there would be no demand for Chopin
+and Schumann on the pianolas.  It was a laugh that even her brother could
+not resist: a paroxysm of coughing burst from behind the curtains, and he
+came out beside her chuckling.
+
+“I reckoned without my hoast,” said he, gasping.
+
+“I was sure you were upstairs,” said Alison.  “You silly man!  Upon my
+word!  Where’s your dignity, Mr Dyce?”
+
+Dan Dyce stood for a second a little bit abashed, rubbing his chin and
+blinking his eyes as if their fun was a thing to be kept from brimming
+over.  “I’m a great wag!” said he.  “If it’s dignity you’re after, just
+look at my velvet coat!” and so saying he caught the ends of his coat
+skirts with his fingers, held them out at arm’s-length, and turned round
+as he might do at a fit-on in his tailor’s, laughing till his hoast came
+on again.  “Dignity, quo’ she, just look at my velvet coat!”
+
+“Dan, Dan! will you never be wise?” said Ailie Dyce, a humorsome
+demoiselle herself, if you believe me.
+
+“Not if I keep my health,” said he.  “You have made a bonny-like show of
+the old garret, between the two of you.  It’s as smart as a lass at her
+first ball.”
+
+“I think it’s very nice; at least it might be worse,” interrupted Alison
+defensively, glancing round with satisfaction and an eye to the hang of
+the frame round “Watch and Pray.”  Bell’s wool-work never agreed with her
+notions, but, as she knew that her tarts never agreed with Bell, she
+kept, on that point, aye discreetly dumb.
+
+“Poor little Chicago!” said her brother.  “I’m vexed for the wee fellow.
+Print chintz, or chint prints, or whatever it is; sampler texts, and
+scent, and poetry books—what in the world is the boy to break?”
+
+“Oh, you have seen to that department, Dan!” said Ailie, taking the
+pea-sling again in her hand.  “‘A New Year’s Day Present for a Good Boy
+from an Uncle who does not like Cats.’  I declare that _is_ a delightful
+way of making the child feel quite at home at once.”
+
+“Tuts!  ’Tis just a diversion.  I know it’ll cheer him wonderfully to
+find at the start that if there’s no young folk in the house there’s some
+of the eternal Prank.  I suppose there are cats in Chicago.  He cannot
+expect us to provide him with pigs, which are the usual domestic pets
+there, I believe.  You let my pea-sling alone, Ailie; you’ll find it will
+please him more than all the poetry and pink bows.  I was once a boy
+myself, and I know.”
+
+“You were never anything else,” said Alison.  “And never will be anything
+else.  It is a pity to let the child see at the very start what an
+irresponsible person his uncle is; and besides, it’s cruel to throw
+stones at cats.”
+
+“Not at all, not at all!” said her brother briskly, with his head
+quizzically to the side a little, in a way he had when debating in the
+Court.  “I have been throwing stones for twenty years at those cats of
+Rodger’s that live in our garden and I never hit one yet.  They’re all
+about six inches too short for genuine sport.  If cats were Dachshund
+dogs, and I wasn’t so fond of dogs, I would be deadly.  But my ado with
+cats is just one of the manly old British sports, like trout-fishing and
+curling.  You take your fun out in anticipation, and the only difference
+is you never need to carry a flask.  Still, I’m not without hope that my
+nephew from Chicago may have a better aim than I have.”
+
+“You are an old—an old goose, Dan Dyce, and a Happy New Year to you!”
+said his sister, putting her arms suddenly round his neck and kissing
+him.
+
+“Tuts! the coming of that child’s ta’en your head,” said the brother,
+reddening, for sisters never kiss their own brothers in our part,—it’s so
+sentimental, it’s so like the penny stories.  “A Good New Year to you,
+Ailie,” and “Tuts!” he said again, looking quite upset, till Ailie
+laughed and put her arm through his and drew him downstairs to the
+breakfast to which she had come to summon him.
+
+The Chicago child’s bedroom, left to itself, chilly a bit like Highland
+weather, but honest and clean, looked more like a bower than ever: the
+morning sun, peeping over garden trees and the chimneys of the lanes,
+gazed particularly on the table where the pea-sling and the poetry book
+lay together.
+
+And now the town was thronged like a fair-day, with such stirring things
+happening every moment in the street that the servant, Kate, had a
+constant head out at the window, “putting by the time,” as she explained
+to the passing inquirer, “till the Mustress would be ready for the
+breakfast.”  That was Kate,—she had come from an island where they make
+the most of everything that may be news, even if it’s only brandy-sauce
+to pudding at the minister’s; and Miss Dyce could not start cutting a new
+bodice or sewing a button on her brother’s trousers but the maid billowed
+out upon the window-sash to tell the tidings to the first of her sex that
+passed.
+
+Over the trodden snow she saw the people from the country crowd in their
+Sunday clothes, looking pretty early in the day for gaiety, all with
+scent on their handkerchiefs (which is the odour of festive days for a
+hundred miles round burgh towns); and town people, less splendid in
+attire, as folk that know the difference between a holiday and a Sabbath,
+and leave their religious hard hats at home on a New Year’s day;
+children, too, replete with bun already, and all succulent with the juice
+of Divine’s oranges.  She heard the bell begin to peal again, for Wully
+Oliver—fie on Wully Oliver!—had been met by some boys who told him the
+six o’clock bell was not yet rung, and sent him back to perform an office
+he had done with hours before.  He went to his bell dubiously, something
+in the dizzy abyss he called his mind that half convinced him he had rung
+it already.
+
+“Let me pause and consider,” he said once or twice when being urged to
+the rope, scratching the hair behind his ears with both hands, his
+gesture of reflection.  “Was there no’ a bairn—an auld-fashioned
+bairn—helped to ca’ the bell already, and wanted to gie me money for the
+chance?  It runs in my mind there was a bairn, and that she had us aye
+boil-boiling away at eggs; but maybe I’m wrong, for I’ll admit I had a
+dram or two and lost the place.  I don’t believe in dram-dram-dramming,
+but I aye say if you take a dram, take it in the morning and you get the
+good of it all day.  It’s a tip I learned in the Crimea.”  But at last
+they convinced him the bairn was just imagination, and Wanton Wully
+Oliver spat on his hands and grasped the rope, and so it happened that
+the morning bell on the New Year’s day on which my story opens was twice
+rung.
+
+The Dyce handmaid heard it pealing as she hung over the window-sash with
+her cap agee on her head.  She heard from every quarter—from lanes,
+closes, tavern rooms, high attics, and back-yards—fifes playing; it was
+as if she leaned over a magic grove of great big birds, each singing its
+own song—“Come to the Bower,” or “Monymusk,” or “The Girl I left Behind
+Me,” noble airs wherein the captain of the band looked for a certain
+perfection from his musicians before they marched out again at midday.
+“For,” said he often in rehearsals, “anything will do in the way of a
+tune in the dark, my sunny boys, but it must be the tiptop of skill, and
+no discordancy, when the eyes of the world are on us.  One turn more at
+‘Monymusk,’ sunny boys, and then we’ll have a skelp at yon tune of my own
+composure.”
+
+Besides the sound of the bell and the universal practice of the fifes
+there were loud vocalists at the Cross, and such laughter in the street
+that Kate was in an ecstasy.  Once, uplifted beyond all private decorum,
+she kilted her gown and gave a step of a reel in her kitchen solitude.
+
+“Isn’t it cheery, the noise!” she exclaimed delightly to the
+letter-carrier who came to the window with the morning’s letters.  “Oh, I
+am feeling beautiful!  It is—it is—it is just like being inside a pair of
+bagpipes.”
+
+He was a man who roared, the postman, being used to bawling up long
+common-stairs in the tenements for the people to come down to the foot
+themselves for their letters—a man with one roguish eye for the maiden
+and another at random.  Passing in the letters one by one, he said in
+tones that on a quieter day might be heard half up the street, “Nothing
+for you, yourself, personally, Kate, but maybe there’ll be one to-morrow.
+Three big blue anes and seven wee anes for the man o’ business himsel’,
+twa for Miss Dyce (she’s the wonderfu’ correspondent!), and ane for Miss
+Alison wi’ the smell o’ scented perfume on’t—that’ll be frae the Miss
+Birds o’ Edinburgh.  And I near forgot—here’s a post-caird for Miss Dyce:
+hearken to this—
+
+“‘Child arrived Liverpool yesterday; left this morning for Scotland.
+Quite safe to go alone, charge of conductor.  Pip, pip!  Molyneux.’”
+
+“Whatna child is it, Kate?”
+
+“‘Pip, pip!’  What in the world’s ‘Pip, pip’?  The child is brother
+William’s child, to be sure,” said Kate, who always referred to the Dyce
+relations as if they were her own.  “You have heard of brother William?”
+
+“Him that was married on the play-actress and never wrote home?” shouted
+the letter-carrier.  “He went away before my time.  Go on; quick, for I’m
+in a desperate hurry this mornin’.”
+
+“Well, he died abroad in Chickagoo.  God have mercy on him dying so far
+away from home, and him without a word of Gaelic in his head! and a
+friend o’ his father ’s bringing the boy home to his aunties.”
+
+“Where in the world’s Chickagoo?” bellowed the postman.
+
+“In America, of course,—where else would it be but in America?” said Kate
+contemptuously.  “Where is your education not to know that Chickagoo is
+in America, where the servant-maids have a pound a-week of wages, and
+learn the piano, and can get married when they like quite easy?”
+
+“Bless me! do you say so?” cried the postman in amazement, and not
+without a pang of jealousy.
+
+“Yes, I say so!” said Kate in the snappish style she often showed to the
+letter-carrier.  “And the child is coming this very day with the
+coach-and-twice from Maryfield railway station—oh them trains! them
+trains! with their accidents; my heart is in my mouth to think of a child
+in them.  Will you not come round to the back and get the Mustress’s New
+Year dram?  She is going to give a New Year dram to every man that calls
+on business this day.  But I will not let you in, for it is in my mind
+that you would not be a lucky first-foot.”
+
+“Much obleeged,” said the postman, “but ye needna be feared.  I’m not
+allowed to go dramming at my duty.  It’s offeecial, and I canna help it.
+If it was not offeecial, there’s few letter-carriers that wouldna need to
+hae iron hoops on their heids to keep their brains from burstin’ on the
+day efter New Year.”
+
+Kate heard a voice behind her, and pulled her head in hurriedly with a
+gasp, and a cry of “Mercy, the start I got!” while the postman fled on
+his rounds.  Miss Dyce stood behind, in the kitchen, indignant.
+
+“You are a perfect heartbreak, Kate,” said the mistress.  “I have rung
+for breakfast twice, and you never heard me, with your clattering out
+there to the letter-carrier.  It’s a pity you cannot marry the glee
+party, as Mr Dyce calls him, and be done with it.”
+
+“Me marry him!” cried the maid indignantly.  “I think I see myself
+marryin’ a man like yon, and his eyes not neighbours.”
+
+“That’s a trifle in a husband if his heart is good: the letter-carrier’s
+eyes may—may skew a little, but it’s not to be wondered at, considering
+the look-out he has to keep on all sides of him to keep out of reach of
+every trollop in the town who wants to marry him.”
+
+And leaving Kate speechless at this accusation, the mistress of the house
+took the letters from her hands and went to the breakfast-table with
+them.
+
+She had read the contents of the post-card before she reached the
+parlour; its news dismayed her.
+
+“Just imagine!” she cried.  “Here’s that bairn on his way from Liverpool
+his lee-lone, and not a body with him!”
+
+“What! what!” cried Mr Dyce, whose eyes had been shut to say the grace.
+“Isn’t that actor-fellow, Molyneux, coming with him, as he promised?”
+
+Miss Dyce sunk in a chair and burst into tears, crushing the post-card in
+her hand.
+
+“What does he say?” demanded her brother.
+
+“He says—he says—oh, dear me!—he says ‘Pip, pip!’” quoth the weeping
+sister.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+“I MISDOUBTED Mr Molyneux from the very first,” said Ailie, turning as
+white as a clout.  “From all his post-cards he was plainly too casual.
+Stop it, Bell, my dear—have sense; the child’s in a Christian land, and
+in care of somebody who is probably more dependable than this delightful
+Molyneux.”
+
+Mr Dyce took out an old, thick, silver verge.  “Nine o’clock,” he said,
+with a glance at its creamy countenance.  “Molyneux’s consignment is
+making his first acquaintance with Scottish scenery and finding himself,
+I hope, amused at the Edinburgh accent.  He’ll arrive at Maryfield—poor
+wee smout!—at three; if I drive over at twelve, I’ll be in time to meet
+him.  Tuts, Bell, give over; he’s a ten-year-old and a Dyce at
+that,—there’s not the slightest fear of him.”
+
+“Ten years old, and in a foreign country—if you can call Scotland a
+foreign country,” cried Miss Dyce, still sobbing with anger and grief.
+“Oh, the cat-witted scamp, that Molyneux,—if I had him here!”
+
+The dining-room door opened and let in a yawning dog of most plebeian
+aspect, longest lie-abed of the household, the clamour of the street, and
+the sound of sizzling bacon, followed by Kate’s majestic form at a
+stately glide, because she had on her new stiff lilac print that was worn
+for breakfast only on Sundays and holidays.  “You would think I was never
+coming,” she said genially, and smiled widely as she put the tray on the
+sideboard.  This that I show you, I fear, is a beggarly household,
+absurdly free from ceremony.  Mr Dyce looked at his sister Ailie and
+smiled; Ailie looked at her sister Bell and smiled.  Bell took a hairpin
+or two out of their places and seemed to stab herself with them viciously
+in the nape of the neck, and smiled not at all nor said anything, for she
+was furious with Molyneux, whom she could see in her mind’s eye—an ugly,
+tippling, frowsy-looking person with badly polished boots, an impression
+that would have greatly amused Mrs Molyneux, who, not without reason,
+counted her Jim the handsomest man and the best dressed in the profession
+in all Chicago.
+
+“I’m long of coming, like Royal Charlie,” Kate proceeded, as she passed
+the ashets on to Miss Dyce; “but, oh me! New Year’s day here is no’ like
+New Year’s day in the bonny isle of Colonsay.”
+
+Mr Dyce said grace and abstractedly helped himself alternately from both
+ends of a new roll of powdered butter.  “Dan, dear, don’t take the butter
+from both ends,—it spoils the look,” said Bell.
+
+“Tuts!” said he.  “What’s the odds?  There’ll be no ends at all when
+we’re done with it.  I’m utterly regardless of the symmetrical and the
+beautiful this morning.  I’m savage to think of that man Molyneux.  If I
+was not a man of peace I would be wanting to wring Mr Molyneux’s neck,”
+and he twisted his morning roll in halves with ferocious hands.
+
+“Dan!” said Ailie, shocked.  “I never heard you say anything so
+bloodthirsty in all my life before.  I would never have thought it of
+you.”
+
+“Maybe not,” he said.  “There’s many things about me you never suspected.
+You women are always under delusions about the men—about the men—well,
+dash it! about the men you like.  I know myself so well that there is no
+sin, short of one or two not so accounted, that I cannot think myself
+capable of.  I believe I might be forced into robbing a kirk if I had no
+money and was as hungry as I was this morning before that post-card came
+to ruin a remarkably fine New-Year’s-day appetite, or even into murdering
+a man like Molyneux who failed in the simplest duties no man should
+neglect.”
+
+“I hope and trust,” said Bell, still nervous, “that he is a wiselike boy
+with a proper upbringing, who will not be frightened at travelling and
+make no mistakes about the train.  If he was a Scotch laddie, with the
+fear of God in him, I would not be a bit put about for him, for he would
+be sure to be asking, asking, and if he felt frightened he would just
+start and eat something, like a Christian.  But this poor child has no
+advantages.  Just American!”
+
+Ailie sat back in her chair, with her teacup in her hand, and laughed,
+and Kate laughed quietly—though it beat her to see where the fun was; and
+the dog laughed likewise—at least it wagged its tail and twisted its body
+and made such extraordinary sounds in its throat that you could say it
+was laughing.
+
+“Tuts! you are the droll woman, Bell,” said Mr Dyce, blinking at her.
+“You have the daftest ideas of some things.  For a woman who spent so
+long a time in Miss Mushet’s seminary and reads so much at the
+newspapers, I wonder at you.”
+
+“Of course his father was Scotch, that’s one mercy,” added Bell, not a
+bit annoyed at the reception of her pious opinions.
+
+“That is always something to be going on with,” said Mr Dyce mockingly.
+“I hope he’ll make the most of that great start in life and fortune.
+It’s as good as money in his pocket.”
+
+Bell put up a tiny hand and pushed a stray curl (for she had a rebel
+chevelure) behind her ear, and smiled in spite of her anxiety about the
+coming nephew.  “You may laugh if you like, Dan,” she said emphatically,
+perking with her head across the table at him; “but I’m _proud_, I’m
+PROUD, I’m PROUD I’m Scotch.”  (“Not apologising for it myself,” said her
+brother softly.)  “And you know what these Americans are!  Useless
+bodies, who make their men brush their own boots, and have to pay wages
+that’s a sin to housemaids, and eat pie even-on.”
+
+“Dear me! is that true, or did you see it in a newspaper?” said her
+brother.  “I begin to be alarmed myself at the possibilities of this
+small gentleman now on his way to the north, in the complete confidence
+of Mr Molyneux, who must think him very clever.  It’s a land of infant
+prodigies he comes from; even at the age of ten he may have more of the
+stars and stripes in him than we can eradicate by a diet of porridge and
+a curriculum of Shorter Catechism and Jane Porter’s ‘Scottish Chiefs.’
+Faith, I was fond of Jane myself when I read her first: she was nice and
+bloody.  A big soft hat with a bash in it, perhaps; a rhetorical delivery
+at the nose, ‘I guess and calculate’ every now and then; a habit of
+chewing tobacco” (“We’ll need a cuspidor,” said Ailie _sotto voce_); “and
+a revolver in his wee hip-pocket.  Oh, the darling!  I can see him quite
+plainly.”
+
+“Mercy on us!” cried the maid Kate, and fled the room all in a tremor at
+the idea of the revolver.
+
+“You may say what you like, but I cannot get over his being an American,”
+said Bell solemnly.  “The dollar’s everything in America, and they’re so
+independent!”
+
+“Terrible! terrible!” said her brother ironically, breaking into another
+egg fiercely with his knife, as if he were decapitating the President of
+the United States.
+
+Ailie laughed again.  “Dear, dear Bell!” she said, “it sounds quite
+Scotch.  A devotion to the dollar is a good sound basis for a Scotch
+character.  Remember there are about a hundred bawbees in a dollar: just
+think of the dollar in bawbees, and you’ll not be surprised that the
+Americans prize it so much.”
+
+“Renegade!” said Bell, shaking a spoon at her.
+
+“Provincial!” retorted Ailie, shaking a fork at Bell.
+
+   “‘Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,
+   Bright the beams that shine on me,’
+
+—children, be quiet,” half-sung, half-said their brother.  “Bell, you are
+a blether; Ailie, you are a cosmopolitan, a thing accursed.  That’s what
+Edinburgh and Brussels and your too brisk head have done for you.  Just
+bring yourself to our poor parochial point of view, and tell me, both of
+you, what you propose to do with this young gentleman from Chicago when
+you get him.”
+
+“Change his stockings and give him a good tea,” said Bell promptly, as if
+she had been planning it for weeks.  “He’ll be starving of hunger and
+damp with snow.”
+
+“There’s something more than dry hose and high tea to the making of a
+man,” said her brother.  “You can’t keep that up for a dozen years.”
+
+“Oh, you mean education!” said Bell resignedly.  “That’s not in my
+department at all.”
+
+Ailie expressed her views with calm, soft deliberation, as if she, too,
+had been thinking of nothing else for weeks, which was partly the case.
+“I suppose,” she said, “he’ll go to the Grammar School, and get a good
+grounding on the classic side, and then to the University.  I will just
+love to help him so long as he’s at the Grammar School.  That’s what I
+should have been, Dan, if you had let me—a teacher.  I hope he’s a bright
+boy, for I simply cannot stand what Bell calls—calls—”
+
+“Diffies,” suggested Bell.
+
+“Diffies; yes, I can _not_ stand diffies.  Being half a Dyce I can hardly
+think he will be a diffy.  If he’s the least like his father, he may be a
+little wild at first, but at least he’ll be good company, which makes up
+for a lot, and good-hearted, quick in perception, fearless, and—”
+
+“And awful funny,” suggested Bell, beaming with old, fond, glad
+recollections of the brother dead beside his actor wife in far Chicago.
+
+“Fearless, and good fun,” continued Ailie.  “Oh, dear Will! what a merry
+soul he was.  Well, the child cannot be a fool if he’s like his father.
+American independence, though he has it in—in—in clods, won’t do him any
+harm at all.  I love Americans—do you hear that, Bell Dyce?—because they
+beat that stupid old King George, and have been brave in the forest and
+wise on the prairie, and feared no face of king, and laughed at
+dynasties.  I love them because they gave me Emerson, and Whitman, and
+Thoreau, and because one of them married my brother William, and was the
+mother of his child.”
+
+Dan Dyce nodded; he never quizzed his sister Ailie when it was her heart
+that spoke and her eyes were sparkling.
+
+“The first thing you should learn him,” said Miss Dyce, “is ‘God save the
+Queen.’  It’s a splendid song altogether; I’m glad I’m of a kingdom every
+time I hear it at a meeting, for it’s all that’s left of the olden
+notions the Dyces died young or lost their money for.  You’ll learn him
+that, Ailie, or I’ll be very vexed with you.  I’ll put flesh on his bones
+with my cooking if you put the gentleman in him.”
+
+It was Bell’s idea that a gentleman talked a very fine English accent
+like Ailie, and carried himself stately like Ailie, and had wise and
+witty talk for rich or poor like Ailie.
+
+“I’m not so sure about the university,” she went on.  “Such stirks come
+out of it sometimes; look at poor Maclean, the minister!  They tell me he
+could speak Hebrew if he got anybody to speak it back slow to him, but
+just imagine the way he puts on his clothes!  And his wife manages him
+not so bad in broad Scotch.  I think we could do nothing better than make
+the boy a lawyer; it’s a trade looked up to, and there’s money in it,
+though I never could see the need of law myself if folk would only be
+agreeable.  He could go into Dan’s office whenever he is old enough.”
+
+“A lawyer!” cried her brother.  “You have first of all to see that he’s
+not an ass.”
+
+“And what odds would that make to a lawyer?” said Bell quickly, snapping
+her eyes at the brother she honestly thought the wisest man in Scotland.
+
+“Bell,” said he, “as I said before, you’re a haivering body—nothing else,
+though I’ll grant you bake no’ a bad scone.  And as for you, Ailie,
+you’re beginning, like most women, at the wrong end.  The first thing to
+do with your nephew is to teach him to be happy, for it’s a habit that
+has to be acquired early, like the liking for pease-brose.”
+
+“You began gey early yourself,” said Bell.  “Mother used to say that she
+was aye kittling your feet till you laughed when you were a baby.  I
+sometimes think that she did not stop it soon enough.”
+
+“If I had to educate myself again, and had not a living to make, I would
+leave out a good many things the old dominie thought needful.  What was
+yon awful thing again?—mensuration.  To sleep well and eat anything, fear
+the face of nobody in bashfulness, to like dancing, and be able to sing a
+good bass or tenor,—that’s no bad beginning in the art of life.  There’s
+a fellow Brodie yonder in the kirk choir who seems to me happier than a
+king when he’s getting in a fine boom-boom of bass to the tune Devizes;
+he puts me all out at my devotions on a Lord’s day with envy of his
+accomplishment.”
+
+“What! envy too!” said Alison.  “Murder, theft, and envy—what a brother!”
+
+“Yes, envy too, the commonest and ugliest of our sins,” said Mr Dyce.  “I
+never met man or woman who lacked it, though many never know they have
+it.  I hope the great thing is to be ashamed to feel it, for that’s all
+that I can boast of myself.  When I was a boy at the school there was
+another boy, a great friend of my own, was chosen to compete for a prize
+I was thought incapable of taking, so that I was not on the list.  I
+envied him to hatred—almost; and saying my bits of prayers at night I
+prayed that he might win.  I felt ashamed of my envy, and set the better
+Daniel Dyce to wrestle with the Daniel Dyce who was not quite so big.  It
+was a sair fight, I can assure you.  I found the words of my prayer and
+my wishes considerably at variance—”
+
+“Like me and ‘Thy will be done’ when we got the word of brother William,”
+said Bell.
+
+“But my friend—dash him!—got the prize.  I suppose God took a kind of
+vizzy down that night and saw the better Dan Dyce was doing his desperate
+best against the other devil’s-Dan, who mumbled the prayer on the chance
+He would never notice.  There was no other way of accounting for it, for
+that confounded boy got the prize, and he was not half so clever as
+myself, and that was Alick Maitland.  Say nothing about envy, Ailie; I
+fear we all have some of it until we are perhaps well up in years, and
+understand that between the things we envy and the luck we have there is
+not much to choose.  If I got all I wanted, myself, the world would have
+to be much enlarged.  It does not matter a docken leaf.  Well, as I was
+saying when my learned friend interrupted me, I would have this young
+fellow healthy and happy and interested in everything.  There are men I
+see who would mope and weary in the middle of a country fair—God help
+them!  I want to stick pins in them sometimes and make them jump.  They
+take as little interest in life as if they were undertakers.”
+
+“Hoots! nobody could weary in this place at any rate,” said Bell briskly.
+“Look at the life and gaiety that’s in it.  Talk about London!  I can
+hardly get my sleep at night quite often with the traffic.  And such
+things are always happening in it—births and marriages, engagements and
+tea-parties, new patterns at Miss Minto’s, two coaches in the day, and
+sometimes somebody doing something silly that will keep you laughing half
+the week.”
+
+“But it’s not quite so lively as Chicago,” said Mr Dyce.  “There has not
+been a man shot in this neighbourhood since the tinker kind of killed his
+wife (as the fiscal says) with the pistol.  You’ll have heard of him?
+When the man was being brought on the scaffold for it, and the minister
+asked if he had anything to say before he suffered the extreme penalty of
+the law, ‘All I have got to say,’ he answered, starting to greet, ‘is
+that this’ll be an awful lesson to me.’”
+
+“That’s one of your old ones,” said Bell; but even an old one was welcome
+in Dyce’s house on New Year’s day, and the three of them laughed at the
+story as if it had newly come from London in Ailie’s precious ‘Punch.’
+The dog fell into a convulsion of merriment, as if inward chuckles
+tormented him—as queer a dog as ever was, neither Scotch terrier nor
+Skye, Dandy Dinmont nor Dachshund, but just dog,—dark wire-haired behind,
+short ruddy-haired in front, a stump tail, a face so fringed you could
+only see its eyes when the wind blew.  Mr Dyce put down his hand and
+scratched it behind the ear.  “Don’t laugh, Footles,” he said.  “I would
+not laugh if I were you, Footles,—it’s just an old one.  Many a time
+you’ve heard it before, sly rogue.  One would think you wanted to borrow
+money.”  If you could hear Dan Dyce speak to his dog, you would know at
+once he was a bachelor: only bachelors and bairnless men know dogs.
+
+“I hope and trust he’ll have decent clothes to wear, and none of their
+American rubbish,” broke in Bell, back to her nephew again.  “It’s all
+nonsense about the bashed hat; but you can never tell what way an
+American play-actor will dress a bairn: there’s sure to be something
+daft-like about him—a starry waistcoat or a pair of spats,—and we must
+make him respectable like other boys in the place.”
+
+“I would say Norfolk suits, the same as the banker’s boys,” suggested
+Ailie.  “I think the banker’s boys always look so smart and neat.”
+
+“Anything with plenty of pockets in it,” said Mr Dyce.  “At the age of
+ten a boy would prefer his clothes to be all pockets.  By George! an
+entire suit of pockets, with a new penny in every pocket for luck, would
+be a great treat,”—and he chuckled at the idea, making a mental note of
+it for a future occasion.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Bell emphatically, for here she was in her
+own department.  “The boy is going to be a Scotch boy.  I’ll have the
+kilt on him, or nothing.”
+
+“The kilt!” said Mr Dyce.
+
+“The kilt!” cried Ailie.
+
+Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
+
+It was a loud knocking at the front door.  They stopped the talk to
+listen, and they heard the maid go along the lobby from the kitchen.
+When she opened the door, there came in the cheerful discord of the
+street, the sound of a pounding drum, the fifes still busy, the
+orange-hawker’s cry, but over all they heard her put her usual
+interrogation to visitors, no matter what their state or elegance.
+
+“Well, what is’t?” she asked, and though they could not see her, they
+knew she would have the door just a trifle open, with her shoulder
+against it, as if she was there to repel some chieftain of a wild
+invading clan.  Then they heard her cry, “Mercy on me!” and her footsteps
+hurrying to the parlour door.  She threw it open, and stood with some one
+behind her.
+
+“What do you think?  Here’s brother William’s wean!” she exclaimed in a
+gasp.
+
+“My God!  Where is he?” cried Bell, the first to find her tongue.  “He’s
+no hurt, is he?”
+
+“_It’s no’ a him at all—it’s a her_!” shrieked Kate, throwing up her arms
+in consternation, and stepping aside she gave admission to a little girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+THE orphan child of William and Mary Dyce, dead, the pair of them, in the
+far-off city of Chicago, stepped quite serenely into an astounded
+company.  There were three Dyces in a row in front of her, and the droll
+dog Footles at her feet, and behind her, Kate, the servant, wringing her
+apron as if it had newly come from the washing-boyne, her bosom heaving.
+Ten eyes (if you could count the dog’s, hidden by his tousy fringe)
+stared at the child a moment, and any ordinary child would have been much
+put out; but this was no common child, or else she felt at once the fond
+kind air of home.  I will give you her picture in a sentence or two.  She
+was black-haired, dark and quick in the eye, not quite pale but olive in
+complexion, with a chin she held well up, and a countenance neither shy
+nor bold, but self-possessed.  Fur on her neck and hood (Jim Molyneux’s
+last gift), and a muff that held her arms up to the elbows, gave her an
+aspect of picture-book cosiness that put the maid in mind at once of the
+butcher’s Christmas calendar.
+
+It was the dog that first got over the astonishment: he made a dive at
+her with little friendly growls, and rolled on his back at her feet, to
+paddle with his four paws in the air, which was his way of showing he was
+in the key for fun.
+
+With a cry of glee she threw the muff on the floor and plumped beside
+him, put her arms about his body and buried her face in his fringe.  His
+tail went waving, joyous, like a banner.  “Doggie, doggie, you love me,”
+said she in an accent that was anything but American.  “Let us pause and
+consider,—you will not leave this house till I boil you an egg.”
+
+“God bless me, what child’s this?” cried Bell, coming to herself with a
+start, and, pouncing on her, she lifted her to her feet.  Ailie sank on
+her hands and knees and stared in the visitor’s face.  “The kilt,
+indeed!” said Mr Dyce to himself.  “This must be a warlock wean, for if
+it has not got the voice and sentiment of Wanton Wully Oliver I’m losing
+my wits.”
+
+“Tell me this, quick, are you Lennox Dyce?” said Bell all trembling,
+devouring the little one with her eyes.
+
+“Well, I just guess I am,” replied the child calmly, with the dog licking
+her chin.  “Say, are you Auntie Bell?” and this time there was no doubt
+about the American accent.  Up went her mouth to them to be kissed,
+composedly: they lost no time, but fell upon her, Ailie half in tears
+because at once she saw below the childish hood so much of brother
+William.
+
+“Lennox, dear, you should not speak like that; who in all the world
+taught you to speak like that?” said Bell, unwrapping her.
+
+“Why, I thought that was all right here,” said the stranger.  “That’s the
+way the bell-man speaks.”
+
+“Bless me!  Do you know the bell-man?” cried Miss Dyce.
+
+“I rang his old bell for him this morning—didn’t you hear me?” was the
+surprising answer.  “He’s a nice man; he liked me.  I’d like him too if
+he wasn’t so tired.  He was too tired to speak sense; all he would say
+was, ‘I’ve lost the place; let us pause and consider,’ and ‘Try another
+egg.’  I said I would give him a quarter if he’d let me ring his bell,
+and he said he’d let me do it for nothing, and my breakfast besides.
+‘You’ll not leave this house till I boil an egg for you’—that’s what he
+said, and the poor man was so tired and his legs were dreff’le poorly!”
+Again her voice was the voice of Wully Oliver; the sentiment, as the
+Dyces knew, was the slogan of his convivial hospitality.
+
+“The kilt, indeed!” said Mr Dyce, feeling extraordinarily foolish, and,
+walking past them, he went upstairs and hurriedly put the pea-sling in
+his pocket.
+
+When he came down, Young America was indifferently pecking at her second
+breakfast with Footles on her knee, an aunt on either side of her, and
+the maid Kate with a tray in her hand for excuse, open-mouthed, half in
+at the door.
+
+“Well, as I was saying, Jim—that’s my dear Mr Molyneux, you know—got busy
+with a lot of the boys once he landed off that old ship, and so he said,
+‘Bud, this is the—the—justly cel’brated Great Britain; I know by the
+boys; they’re so lonely when they’re by themselves; I was ’prehensive we
+might have missed it in the dark, but it’s all right.’  And next day he
+bought me this muff and things and put me on the cars—say, what funny
+cars you have!—and said ‘Good-bye, Bud; just go right up to Maryfield,
+and change there.  If you’re lost anywhere on the island just holler out
+good and loud, and I’ll hear!’  He pretended he wasn’t caring, but he was
+pretty blinky ’bout the eyes, and I saw he wasn’t anyway gay, so I never
+let on the way I felt myself.”
+
+She suggested the tone and manner of the absent Molyneux in a fashion to
+put him in the flesh before them.  Kate almost laughed loud out at the
+oddity of it; Ailie and her brother were astounded at the cleverness of
+the mimicry; Bell clenched her hands, and said for the second time that
+day, “Oh! that Molyneux, if I had him!”
+
+“He’s a nice man, Jim.  I can’t tell you how I love him—and he gave me
+heaps of candy at the depot,” proceeded the unabashed new-comer.
+“‘Change at Edinburgh,’ he said; ‘you’ll maybe have time to run into the
+Castle and see the Duke; give him my love, but not my address.  When you
+get to Maryfield hop out slick and ask for your uncle Dyce.’  And then he
+said, did Jim, ‘I hope he ain’t a loaded Dyce, seein’ he’s Scotch, and
+it’s the festive season.’”
+
+“The adorable Jim!” said Ailie.  “We might have known.”
+
+“I got on all right,” proceeded the child, “but I didn’t see the Duke of
+Edinburgh; there wasn’t time, and uncle wasn’t at Maryfield, but a man
+put me on his mail carriage and drove me right here.  He said I was a
+caution.  My! it was cold.  Say, is it always weather like this here?”
+
+“Sometimes it’s like this, and sometimes it’s just ordinary Scotch
+weather,” said Mr Dyce, twinkling at her through his spectacles.
+
+“I was dreff’le sleepy in the mail, and the driver wrapped me up, and
+when I came into this town in the dark he said, ‘Walk right down there
+and rap at the first door you see with a brass man’s hand for a knocker;
+that’s Mr Dyce’s house.’  I came down, and there wasn’t any brass man,
+but I saw the knocker.  I couldn’t reach up to it, so when I saw a man
+going into the church with a lantern in his hand, I went up to him and
+pulled his coat.  I knew he’d be all right going into a church.  He told
+me he was going to ring the bell, and I said I’d give him a quarter—oh, I
+said that before.  When the bell was finished he took me to his house for
+luck—that was what he said—and he and his wife got right up and boiled
+eggs.  They said I was a caution, too, and they went on boiling eggs, and
+I couldn’t eat more than two and a white though I tried _and_ tried.  I
+think I slept a good while in their house; I was so fatigued, and they
+were all right; they loved me, I could see that.  And I liked them some
+myself, though they must be mighty poor, for they haven’t any children.
+Then the bell-man took me to this house, and rapped at the door, and went
+away pretty quick for him before anybody came to it, because he said he
+was plain-soled—what’s plain-soled anyhow?—and wasn’t a lucky first-foot
+on a New Year’s morning.”
+
+“It beats all, that’s what it does!” cried Bell.  “My poor wee
+whitterick!  Were ye no’ frightened on the sea?”
+
+“Whitterick, whitterick,” repeated the child to herself, and Ailie,
+noticing, was glad that this was certainly not a diffy.  Diffies never
+interest themselves in new words; diffies never go inside themselves with
+a new fact as a dog goes under a table with a bone.
+
+“Were you not frightened when you were on the sea?” repeated Bell.
+
+“No,” said the child promptly.  “Jim was there all right, you see, and he
+knew all about it.  He said, ‘Trust in Providence, and if it’s _very_
+stormy, trust in Providence and the Scotch captain.’”
+
+“I declare! the creature must have some kind of sense in him, too,” said
+Bell, a little mollified by this compliment to Scotch sea-captains.  And
+all the Dyces fed their eyes upon this wonderful wean that had fallen
+among them.  ’Twas happy in that hour with them; as if in a miracle they
+had been remitted to their own young years; their dwelling was at long
+last furnished!  She had got into the good graces of Footles as if she
+had known him all her life.
+
+“Say, uncle, this is a funny dog,” was her next remark.  “Did God make
+him?”
+
+“Well—yes, I suppose God did,” said Mr Dyce, taken a bit aback.
+
+“Well, isn’t He the darndest!  This dog beats Mrs Molyneux’s Dodo, and
+Dodo was a looloo.  What sort of a dog is he?  Scotch terrier?”
+
+“Mostly not,” said her uncle, chuckling.  “It’s really an improvement on
+the Scotch terrier.  There’s later patents in him, you might say.  He’s a
+sort of mosaic; indeed, when I think of it you might describe him as a
+pure mosaic dog.”
+
+“A Mosaic dog!” exclaimed Lennox.  “Then he must have come from
+scriptural parts.  Perhaps I’ll get playing with him Sundays.  Not
+playing loud out, you know, but just being happy.  I love being happy,
+don’t you?”
+
+“It’s my only weakness,” said Mr Dyce emphatically, blinking through his
+glasses.  “The other business men in the town don’t approve of me for it;
+they call it frivolity.  But it comes so easily to me I never charge it
+in the bills, though a sense of humour should certainly be worth 12s. 6d.
+a smile in the Table of Fees.  It would save many a costly plea.”
+
+“Didn’t you play on Sunday in Chicago?” asked Ailie.
+
+“Not out loud.  Poppa said he was bound to have me Scotch in one thing at
+least, even if it took a strap.  That was after mother died.  He’d just
+read to me Sundays, and we went to church till we had pins and needles.
+We had the Reverend Ebenezer Paul Frazer, M.A., Presbyterian Church on
+the Front.  He just preached and preached till we had pins and needles
+all over.”
+
+“My poor Lennox!” exclaimed Ailie, with feeling.
+
+“Oh, I’m all right!” said young America blithely.  “I’m not kicking.”
+
+Dan Dyce, with his head to the side, took off his spectacles and rubbed
+them clean with his handkerchief; put them on again, looked at his niece
+through them, and then at Ailie, with some emotion struggling in his
+countenance.  Ailie for a moment suppressed some inward convulsion, and
+turned her gaze, embarrassed from him to Bell, and Bell catching the eyes
+of both of them could contain her joy no longer.  They laughed till the
+tears came, and none more heartily than brother William’s child.  She had
+so sweet a laugh that there and then the Dyces thought it the loveliest
+sound they had ever heard in their house.  Her aunts would have devoured
+her with caresses.  Her uncle stood over her and beamed, rubbing his
+hands, expectant every moment of another manifestation of the oddest kind
+of child mind he had ever encountered.  And Kate swept out and in between
+the parlour and the kitchen on trivial excuses, generally with something
+to eat for the child, who had eaten so much in the house of Wanton Wully
+Oliver that she was indifferent to the rarest delicacies of Bell’s
+celestial grocery.
+
+“You’re just—just a wee witch!” said Bell, fondling the child’s hair.
+“Do you know, that man Molyneux—”
+
+“Jim,” suggested Lennox.
+
+“I would Jim him if I had him!  That man Molyneux in all his scrimping
+little letters never said whether you were a boy or a girl, and we
+thought a Lennox was bound to be a boy, and all this time we have been
+expecting a boy.”
+
+“I declare!” said the little one, with the most amusing drawl, a memory
+of Molyneux.  “Why, I always was a girl, far back as I can remember.
+Nobody never gave me the chance to be a boy.  I s’pose I hadn’t the
+clothes for the part, and they just pushed me along anyhow in frocks.
+Would you’d rather I was a boy?”
+
+“Not a bit!  We have one in the house already, and he’s a fair
+heart-break,” said her aunt, with a look towards Mr Dyce.  “We had just
+made up our minds to dress you in the kilt when your rap came to the
+door.  At least, I had made up my mind; the others are so thrawn!  And
+bless me! lassie, where’s your luggage?  You surely did not come all the
+way from Chicago with no more than what you have on your back?”
+
+“You’ll be tickled to death to see my trunks!” said Lennox.  “I’ve heaps
+and heaps of clothes and six dolls.  They’re all coming with the coach.
+They wanted me to wait for the coach too, but the mail man who called me
+a caution said he was bound to have a passenger for luck on New Year’s
+day, and I was in a hurry to get home anyway.”
+
+“Home!”  When she said that, the two aunts swept on her like a billow and
+bore her, dog and all, upstairs to her room.  She was almost blind for
+want of sleep.  They hovered over her quick-fingered, airy as bees,
+stripping her for bed.  She knelt a moment and in one breath said—
+
+“God—bless—father—and—mother—and—Jim—and—Mrs
+Molyneux—and—my—aunts—in—Scotland—and—Uncle—Dan—and—everybody—good-night”
+
+And was asleep in the sunlight of the room as soon as her head fell on
+the pillow.
+
+“She prayed for her father and mother,” whispered Bell, with Footles in
+her arms, as they stood beside the bed.  “It’s not—it’s not quite
+Presbyterian to pray for the dead; it’s very American, indeed you might
+call it papist.”
+
+Ailie’s face reddened, but she said nothing.
+
+“And do you know this?” said Bell shamefacedly, “I do it myself; upon my
+word, I do it myself.  I’m often praying for father and mother and
+William.”
+
+“So am I,” confessed Alison, plainly relieved.  “I’m afraid I’m a poor
+Presbyterian, for I never knew there was anything wrong in doing so.”
+
+Below, in the parlour, Mr Dyce stood looking into the white garden, a
+contented man, humming—
+
+                   “Star of Peace, to wanderers weary.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+SHE was a lucky lassie, this of ours, to have come home to her father’s
+Scotland on that New Year’s day, for there is no denying that it is not
+always gay in Scotland, contrairy land, that, whether we be deep down in
+the waist of the world and afar from her, or lying on her breast, chains
+us to her with links of iron and gold,—stern tasks and happy days
+remembered, ancient stories, austerity and freedom, cold weather on moor
+and glen, warm hearths and burning hearts.  She might have seen this
+burgh first in its solemnity, on one of the winter days when it shivers
+and weeps among its old memorials, and the wild geese cry more constant
+over the house-tops, and the sodden gardens, lanes, wynds, and wells, the
+clanging spirits of old citizens dead and gone, haunting the place of
+their follies and their good times, their ridiculous ideals, their
+mistaken ambitions, their broken plans.  Ah, wild geese! wild geese! old
+ghosts that cry to-night above my dwelling, I feel—I feel and know!  She
+might have come, the child, to days of fast, and sombre dark drugget
+garments, dissonant harsh competing kettle bells, or spoiled harvests,
+poor fishings, hungry hours.  It was good for her, and it is the making
+of my story, that she came not then, but with the pure white cheerful
+snow, to ring the burgh bell in her childish escapade, and usher in with
+merriment the New Year, and begin her new life happily in the old world.
+
+She woke at noon among the scented curtains, in linen sea-breeze
+bleached, under the camceil roof that all children love, for it makes a
+garret like the ancestral cave, and in rainy weather they can hear the
+pattering feet of foes above them.  She heard the sound of John Taggart’s
+drum, and the fifing of “Happy we’ve been a’ thegether,” and turning,
+found upon her pillow a sleeping doll that woke whenever she raised it
+up, and stared at her in wonderment.
+
+“Oh!—Oh!—Oh! you roly-poley blonde!” cried the child in ecstasy, hugging
+it to her bosom and covering it with kisses.  “I’m as glad as anything.
+Do you see the lovely little room?  I’ll tell you right here what your
+name is: it’s Alison; no, it’s Bell; no, it’s Alibel for your two just
+lovely, lovely aunties.”
+
+Up she rose, sleep banished, with a sense of cheerfulness and
+expectation, nimbly dressed herself, and slid down the banisters to
+tumble plump at the feet of her Auntie Bell in the lobby.
+
+“Mercy on us!  You’ll break your neck; are you hurt?” cried Aunt Bell.
+“I’m not kicking,” said the child, and the dog waved furiously a gladsome
+tail.  A log fire blazed and crackled and hissed in the parlour, and Mr
+Dyce tapped time with his fingers on a chair-back to an internal hymn.
+
+“My! ain’t I the naughty girl to be snoozling away like a gopher in a
+hole all day?  Your clock’s stopped, Uncle Dan.”
+
+Mr Dyce looked very guilty, and coughed, rubbing his chin.  “You’re a
+noticing creature,” said he.  “I declare it _has_ stopped.  Well, well!”
+and his sister Bell plainly enjoyed some amusing secret.
+
+“Your uncle is always a little daft, my dear,” she said.
+
+“I would rather be daft than dismal,” he retorted, cleaning his glasses.
+
+“It’s a singular thing that the clocks in our lobby and parlour always
+stop on the New Year’s day, Lennox.”
+
+“Bud; please, say Bud,” pleaded the little one.  “Nobody ever calls me
+Lennox ’cept when I’m doing something wrong and almost going to get a
+whipping.”
+
+“Very well, Bud, then.  This clock gets something wrong with it every New
+Year’s day, for your uncle, that man there, wants the folk who call never
+to know the time so that they’ll bide the longer.”
+
+“Tuts!” said Uncle Dan, who had thought this was his own particular
+recipe for joviality, and that they had never discovered it.
+
+“You have come to a hospitable town, Bud,” said Ailie.  “There are
+convivial old gentlemen on the other side of the street who have got up a
+petition to the magistrates to shut up the inn and the public-house in
+the afternoon.  They say it is in the interests of temperance, but it’s
+really to compel their convivial friends to visit themselves.”
+
+“I signed it myself,” confessed Mr Dyce, “and I’m only half convivial.
+I’m not bragging; I might have been more convivial if it didn’t so easily
+give me a sore head.  What’s more cheerful than a crowd in the house and
+the clash going?  A fine fire, a good light, and turn about at a story!
+The happiest time I ever had in my life was when I broke my leg; so many
+folk called, it was like a month of New Year’s days.  I was born with a
+craving for company.  Mother used to have a superstition that if a knife
+or spoon dropped on the floor from the table it betokened a visitor, and
+I used to drop them by the dozen.  But, dear me! here’s a wean with a
+doll, and where in the world did she get it?”
+
+Bud, with the doll under one arm and the dog tucked under the other,
+laughed up in his face with shy perception.
+
+“Oh, you funny man!” she exclaimed.  “I guess you know all right who put
+Alibel on my pillow.  Why! I could have told you were a doll man: I
+noticed you turning over the pennies in your pants’ pocket, same as poppa
+used when he saw any nice clean little girl like me, and he was the
+dolliest man in all Chicago.  Why, there was treasury days when he just
+rained dolls.”
+
+“That was William, sure enough,” said Mr Dyce.  “There’s no need for
+showing us your strawberry mark.  It was certainly William.  If it had
+only been dolls!”
+
+“Her name’s Alibel, for her two aunties,” said the child.
+
+“Tuts!” said Mr Dyce.  “If I had thought you meant to honour them that
+way I would have made her twins.  But you see I did not know; it was a
+delicate transaction as it was.  I could not tell very well whether a
+doll or a—a—or a fountain pen would be the most appropriate present for a
+ten-year-old niece from Chicago, and I risked the doll.  I hope it fits.”
+
+“Like a halo.  It’s just sweet!” said the ecstatic maiden, and rescued
+one of its limbs from the gorge of Footles.
+
+It got about the town that to Dyces’ house had come a wonderful American
+child who talked language like a minister: the news was partly the news
+of the mail-driver and Wully Oliver, but mostly the news of Kate, who,
+from the moment Lennox had been taken from her presence and put to bed,
+had dwelt upon the window-sashes, letting no one pass that side of the
+street without her confidence.
+
+“You never heard the like!  No’ the size of a shillin’s worth of
+ha’pennies, and she came all the way by her lee-lone in the coach from
+Chickagoo,—that’s in America.  There’s to be throng times in this house
+now, I’m tellin’ you, with brother William’s wean.”
+
+As the forenoon advanced Kate’s intelligence grew more surprising: to the
+new-comer were ascribed a score of characteristics such as had never been
+seen in the town before.  For one thing (would Kate assure them), she
+could imitate Wully Oliver till you almost saw whiskers on her and could
+smell the dram.  She was thought to be a boy to start with, but that was
+only their ignorance in Chickagoo, for the girl was really a lassie, and
+had kists of lassie’s clothes coming with the coach.
+
+The Dyces’ foreigner was such a grand sensation that it marred the
+splendour of the afternoon band parade, though John Taggart was unusually
+glorious, walking on the very backs of his heels, his nose in the
+heavens, and his drumsticks soaring and circling over his head in a way
+to make the spectators giddy.  Instead of following the band till its
+_répertoire_ was suddenly done at five minutes to twelve at the door of
+Maggie White, the wine and spirit merchant, there were many that hung
+about the street in the hope of seeing the American.  They thought they
+would know her at once by the colour of her skin, which some said would
+be yellow, and others maintained would be brown.  A few less patient and
+more privileged boldly visited the house of Dyce to make their New Year
+compliments and see the wonder for themselves.
+
+The American had her eye on them.
+
+She had her eye on the Sheriff’s lady, who was so determinedly affable,
+so pleased with everything the family of Dyce might say, do, or possess,
+and only five times ventured to indicate there were others, by a mention
+of “the dear Lady Anne—so nice, so simple, so unaffected, so amiable.”
+
+On Miss Minto of the crimson cloak, who kept her deaf ear to the sisters
+and her good one to their brother, and laughed heartily at all his little
+jokes even before they were half made, or looked at him with large, soft,
+melting eyes and her lips apart, which her glass had told her was an
+aspect ravishing.  The sisters smiled at each other when she had gone and
+looked comically at Dan, but he, poor man, saw nothing but just that Mary
+Minto was a good deal fatter than she used to be.
+
+On the doctor’s two sisters, late come from a farm in the country,
+marvellously at ease so long as the conversation abode in gossip about
+the neighbours, but in a silent terror when it rose from persons to
+ideas, as it once had done when Lady Anne had asked them what they
+thought of didactic poetry, and one of them said it was a thing she was
+very fond of, and then fell in a swound.
+
+On the banker man, the teller, who was in hopeless love with Ailie, as
+was plain from the way he devoted himself to Bell.
+
+On Mr Dyce’s old retired partner, Mr Cleland, who smelt of cloves and did
+not care for tea.
+
+On P. & A. MacGlashan, who had come in specially to see if the stranger
+knew his brother Albert, who, he said, was “in a Somewhere-ville in
+Manitoba.”
+
+On the Provost and his lady, who were very old, and petted each other
+when they thought themselves unobserved.
+
+On the soft, kind, simple, content and happy ladies lately married.
+
+On the others who would like to be.
+
+Yes, Bud had her eye on them all.  They never guessed how much they
+entertained her as they genteelly sipped their tea, or wine, or ginger
+cordial,—the women of them,—or coughed a little too artificially over the
+New Year glass,—the men.
+
+“Wee Pawkie, that’s what she is—just Wee Pawkie!” said the Provost when
+he got out, and so far it summed up everything.
+
+The ladies could not tear away home fast enough to see if they had not a
+remnant of cloth that could be made into such a lovely dress as that of
+Dyce’s niece for one of their own children.  “Mark my words!” they said
+—“that child will be ruined between them.  She’s her father’s image, and
+he went and married a poor play-actress, and stayed a dozen years away
+from Scotland, and never wrote home a line.”
+
+So many people came to the house, plainly for no reason but to see the
+new-comer, that Ailie at last made up her mind to satisfy all by taking
+her out for a walk.  The strange thing was that in the street the
+populace displayed indifference or blindness.  Bud might have seen no
+more sign of interest in her than the hurried glance of a passer-by; no
+step slowed to show that the most was being made of the opportunity.
+There had been some women at their windows when she came out of the house
+sturdily walking by Aunt Ailie’s side, with her hands in her muff, and
+her keen black eyes peeping from under the fur of her hood; but these
+women drew in their heads immediately.  Ailie, who knew her native town,
+was conscious that from behind the curtains the scrutiny was keen.  She
+smiled to herself as she walked demurely down the street.
+
+“Do you feel anything, Bud?” she asked.
+
+Bud naturally failed to comprehend.
+
+“You ought to feel something at your back; I’m ticklish all down the back
+because of a hundred eyes.”
+
+“I know,” said the astounding child.  “They think we don’t notice, but I
+guess God sees them,” and yet she had apparently never glanced at the
+windows herself, nor looked round to discover passers-by staring over
+their shoulders at her aunt and her.
+
+For a moment Ailie felt afraid.  She dearly loved a quick perception, but
+it was a gift, she felt, a niece might have too young.
+
+“How in the world did you know that, Bud?” she asked.
+
+“I just guessed they’d be doing it,” said Bud, “’cause it’s what I would
+do if I saw a little girl from Scotland walking down the lake front in
+Chicago.  Is it dre’ffle rude, Aunt Ailie?”
+
+“So they say, so they say,” said her aunt, looking straight forward, with
+her shoulders back and her eyes level, flushing at the temples.  “But I’m
+afraid we can’t help it.  It’s undignified—to be seen doing it.  I can
+see you’re a real Dyce, Bud.  The other people who are not Dyces lose a
+great deal of fun.  Do you know, child, I think you and I are going to be
+great friends—you and I and Aunt Bell and Uncle Dan.”
+
+“And the Mosaic dog,” added Bud with warmth.  “I love that old dog so
+much that I could—I could eat him.  He’s the becomingest dog!  Why, here
+he is!”  And it was indeed Footles who hurled himself at them, a
+rapturous mass of unkempt hair and convulsive barkings, having escaped
+from the imprisonment of Kate’s kitchen by climbing over her shoulders
+and out across the window-sash.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+“I HEARD all about you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan from pop—from
+father,” said Bud, as they walked back to the house.  She had learned
+already from example how sweeter sounded “father” than the term she had
+used in America.  “He was mighty apt to sit up nights talking about you
+all.  But I don’t quite place Kate: he never mentioned Kate.”
+
+“Oh, she’s a new addition,” explained Ailie.  “Kate is the maid, you
+know: she came to us long after your father left home, but she’s been
+with us five years now, and that’s long enough to make her one of the
+family.”
+
+“My!  Five years!  She ain’t—she isn’t much of a quitter, is she?  I
+guess you must have tacked her down,” said Bud.  “You don’t get helps in
+Chicago to linger round the dear old spot like that; they get all hot
+running from base to base, same as if it was a game of ball.  But she’s a
+pretty—pretty broad girl, isn’t she?  She couldn’t run very fast; that’ll
+be the way she stays.”
+
+Ailie smiled.  “Ah!  So that’s Chicago, too, is it?  You must have been
+in the parlour a good many times at five-o’clock tea to have grasped the
+situation at your age.  I suppose your Chicago ladies lower the
+temperature of their tea weeping into it the woes they have about their
+domestics?  It’s another Anglo-Saxon link.”
+
+“Mrs Jim said sensible girls that would stay long enough to cool down
+after the last dash were getting that scarce you had to go out after them
+with a gun.  You didn’t really, you know; that was just Mrs Jim’s way of
+putting it.”
+
+“I understand,” said Alison, unable to hide her amusement.  “You seem to
+have picked up that way of putting it yourself.”
+
+“Am I speaking slang?” asked the child, glancing up quickly and
+reddening.  “Father pro—prosisted I wasn’t to speak slang nor chew gum;
+he said it was things no real lady would do in the old country, and that
+I was to be a well-off English undefied.  You must be dre’ffle shocked,
+Auntie Ailie?”
+
+“Oh no,” said Ailie cheerfully; “I never was shocked in all my life,
+though they say I’m a shocker myself.  I’m only surprised a little at the
+possibilities of the English language.  I’ve hardly heard you use a word
+of slang yet, and still you scarcely speak a sentence in which there’s
+not some novelty.  It’s like Kate’s first attempt at sheep’s-head broth:
+we were familiar with all the ingredients except the horns, and we knew
+them elsewhere.”
+
+“That’s all right, then,” said Bud, relieved.  “But Mrs Jim had funny
+ways of putting things, and I s’pose I picked them up.  I can’t help it—I
+pick up so fast.  Why, I had scarletina twice! and I picked up her way of
+zaggerating: often I zaggerate dre’ffle, and say I wrote all the works of
+Shakespeare, when I really didn’t, you know.  Mrs Jim didn’t mean that
+she had to go out hunting for helps with a gun; all she meant was that
+they were getting harder and harder to get, and mighty hard to keep when
+you got them.”
+
+“I know,” said Alison.  “It’s an old British story; you’ll hear it often
+from our visitors, if you’re spared.  But we’re lucky with our Kate; we
+seem to give her complete satisfaction, or, at all events, she puts up
+with us.  When she feels she can’t put up with us any longer, she hurls
+herself on the morning newspaper to look at the advertisements for
+ladies’ maids and housekeepers with £50 a-year, and makes up her mind to
+apply at once, but can never find a pen that suits her before we make her
+laugh.  The servant in the house of Dyce who laughs is lost.  You’ll like
+Kate, Bud.  We like her; and I notice that if you like anybody they
+generally like you back.”
+
+“I’m so glad,” said Bud with enthusiasm.  “If there’s one thing under the
+canopy I am, I’m a liker.”
+
+They had reached the door of the house without seeing the slightest sign
+that the burgh was interested in them, but they were no sooner in than a
+hundred tongues were discussing the appearance of the little American.
+Ailie took off Bud’s cloak and hood, and pushed her into the kitchen,
+with a whisper to her that she was to make Kate’s acquaintance, and be
+sure and praise her scones, then left her and flew upstairs, with a
+pleasant sense of personal good-luck.  It was so sweet to know that
+brother William’s child was anything but a diffy.
+
+Bud stood for a moment in the kitchen, bashful, for it must not be
+supposed she lacked a childish shyness.  Kate, toasting bread at the
+fire, turned round and felt a little blate herself, but smiled at her,
+such a fine expansive smile, it was bound to put the child at ease.
+“Come away in, my dear, and take a bite,” said the maid.  It is so they
+greet you—simple folk!—in the isle of Colonsay.
+
+The night was coming on, once more with snowy feathers.  Wanton Wully lit
+the town.  He went from lamp to lamp with a ladder, children in his train
+chanting
+
+   “Leerie, leerie, light the lamps,
+   Long legs and crooked shanks!”—
+
+and he expostulating with “I know you fine, the whole of you; at least I
+know the boys.  Stop you till I see your mothers!”  Miss Minto’s shop was
+open, and shamefaced lads went dubiously in to buy ladies’ white gloves,
+for with gloves they tryst their partners here at New Year balls, and
+to-night was Samson’s fiddle giggling at the inn.  The long tenement
+lands, as flat and high as cliffs, and built for all eternity, at first
+dark grey in the dusk, began to glow in every window, and down the stairs
+and from the closes flowed exceeding cheerful sounds.  Green fires of
+wood and coal sent up a cloud above these dwellings, tea-kettles jigged,
+and sang.  A thousand things were happening in the street, but for once
+the maid of Colonsay restrained her interest in the window.  “Tell me
+this, what did you say your name was?” she asked.
+
+“I’m Miss Lennox Brenton Dyce,” said Bud primly, “but the Miss don’t
+amount to much till I’m old enough to get my hair up.”
+
+“You must be tired coming so far.  All the way from that Chickagoo!”
+
+“Chicago,” suggested Bud politely.
+
+“Just that!  Chickagoo or Chicago, it depends on the way you spell it,”
+said Kate readily.  “I was brought up to call it Chickagoo.  What a
+length to come on New Year’s day!  Were you not frightened?  Try one of
+them brown biscuits.  And how are they all keeping in America?”
+
+She asked the question with such tender solicitude that Bud saw no humour
+in it, and answered gravely—
+
+“Pretty spry, thank you.  Have you been there?”
+
+“Me!” cried Kate, with her bosom heaving at the very thought.  Then her
+Highland vanity came to her rescue.  “No,” she said, “I have not been
+exactly what you might call altogether there, but I had a cousin that
+started for Australia, and got the length of Paisley.  It’ll be a big
+place America?  Put butter on it.”
+
+“The United States of America are bounded on the east by the Atlantic
+Ocean, on the west by the Pacific, on the south by Mexico and the Gulf,
+and on the north by an imaginary line called Canada.  The State of New
+York alone is as large as England,” said Bud glibly, repeating a familiar
+lesson.
+
+“What a size!” cried Kate.  “Take another of them brown biscuits.
+Scotland’s not slack neither for size; there’s Glasgow and Oban, and
+Colonsay and Stornoway.  There’ll not be hills in America?’
+
+“There’s no hills, just mountains,” said Bud.  “The chief mountain ranges
+are the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.  They’re about the biggest
+mountains in the world.”
+
+“Talking about big things, look at the big pennyworth of milk we get
+here,” said Kate, producing a can: it was almost the last ditch of her
+national pride.
+
+The child looked gravely into the can, and then glanced shrewdly at the
+maid.
+
+“It isn’t a pennyworth,” said she sharply, “it’s twopence worth.”
+
+“My stars! how did you know that?” said Kate, much taken aback.
+
+“’Cause you’re bragging.  Think I don’t know when anybody’s bragging?”
+said Bud.  “And when a body brags about a place or anything, they
+zaggerate, and just about double things.”
+
+“You’re not canny,” said Kate, thrusting the milk-can back hastily on the
+kitchen dresser.  “Don’t spare the butter on your biscuit.  They tell me
+there’s plenty of money in America.  I would not wonder, eh?”
+
+“Why, everybody’s got money to throw at the birds there,” said Bud, with
+some of the accent as well as the favourite phrase of Jim Molyneux.
+
+“They have little to do; forbye, it’s cruelty.  Mind you, there’s plenty
+of money here too; your uncle has a desperate lot of it.  He was wanting
+to go away to America and bring you home whenever he heard—whenever he
+heard—  Will you not try another of them biscuits?  It will do you no
+harm.”
+
+“I know,” said Bud gravely,—“whenever he heard about my father being
+dead.”
+
+“I think we’re sometimes very stupid, us from Colonsay,” said the maid
+regretfully.  “I should have kept my mouth shut about your father.  Take
+_two_ biscuits, my dear; or maybe you would rather have short-cake.  Yes,
+he was for going there and then—even if it cost a pound, I daresay,—but
+changed his mind when he heard yon man Molyneux was bringing you.”
+
+Footles, snug in the child’s lap, shared the biscuits and barked for
+more.
+
+   “I love little Footles,
+      His coat is so warm,
+   And if I don’t tease him
+      He’ll do me no harm,”
+
+said Bud, burying her head in his mane.
+
+“Good Lord! did you make that yourself, or just keep mind of it?” asked
+the astounded Kate.
+
+“I made it just right here,” said Bud coolly.  “Didn’t you know I could
+make poetry?  Why, you poor perishing soul, I’m just a regular wee—wee
+whitterick at poetry!  It goes sloshing round in my head, and it’s simply
+pie for me to make it.  Here’s another—
+
+   ‘Lives of great men oft remind us
+      We can make our lives sublime,
+   And, departing, leave behind us
+      Footprints on the sands of time.’
+
+I just dash them off.  I guess I’ll have to get up bright and early
+to-morrow and touch that one up some.  Mostly you can’t make them good
+the first try, and then you’re bound to go all over them from the
+beginning and put the good in here and there.  That’s art, Jim says.  He
+knew an artist who’d finish a picture with everything quite plain about
+it, and then say, ‘Now for the Art!’ and fuzz it all with a hard brush.”
+
+“My stars! what things you know!” exclaimed the maid.  “You’re
+clever—tremendous clever!  What’s your age?”
+
+“I was born mighty well near ten years ago,” said Bud, as if she were a
+centenarian.
+
+Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever,
+though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that.
+Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think
+herself anything out of the ordinary.  Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no
+children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly
+kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger
+than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common
+enough with Young America.  But Bud, from Maryfield to her uncle’s door,
+had been a “caution” to the plainly admiring mail-driver; a kind of fairy
+princess to Wanton Wully Oliver and his wife; the surprise of her aunts
+had been only half concealed, and here was the maid in an undisguised
+enchantment!  The vanity of ten-year-old was stimulated; for the first
+time in her life she felt decidedly superior.
+
+“It was very brave of me to come all this way in a ship at ten years
+old,” she proceeded.
+
+“I once came to Oban along with a steamer myself,” said Kate, “but och,
+that’s nothing, for I knew a lot of the drovers.  Just fancy you coming
+from America!  Were you not lonely?”
+
+“I was dre’ffle lonely,” said Bud, who, in fact, had never known a
+moment’s dullness across the whole Atlantic.  “There was I leaving my
+native land, perhaps never to set eyes on its shores evermore, and coming
+to a far country I didn’t know the least thing about.  I was leaving all
+my dear young friends, and the beautiful Mrs Molyneux, and her faithful
+dog Dodo, and—” here she squeezed a tear from her eyes, and stopped to
+think of circumstances even more touching.
+
+“My poor wee hen!” cried Kate, distressed.  “Don’t you greet, and I’ll
+buy you something.”
+
+“And I didn’t know what sort of uncle and aunties they might be
+here,—whether they’d be cruel and wicked or not, or whether they’d keep
+me or not.  Little girls most always have cruel uncles and aunties—you
+can see that in the books.”
+
+“You were awful stupid about that bit of it,” said the maid emphatically.
+“I’m sure anybody could have told you about Mr Dyce and his sisters.”
+
+“And then it was so stormy,” proceeded Bud quickly, in search of more
+moving considerations.  “I made a poem about that too,—I just dashed it
+off; the first verse goes—
+
+   ‘The breaking waves dashed high
+      On a stern and rock-bound coast—’
+
+but I forget the rest, ’cept that
+
+   ‘—they come to wither there
+      Away from their childhood’s land.’
+
+The waves were mountains high, and whirled over the deck, and—”
+
+“My goodness, you would get all wet!” said Kate, putting her hand on
+Bud’s shoulder to feel if she were dry yet.  Honest tears were in her own
+eyes at the thought of such distressing affairs.
+
+“The ship at last struck on a rock,” proceeded Bud, “so the captain
+lashed me—”
+
+“I would lash him, the villain!” cried the indignant maid.
+
+“I don’t mean that; he tied me—that’s lash in books—to the mast, and
+then—and then—well, then we waited calmly for the end,” said Bud, at the
+last of her resources for ocean tragedy.
+
+Kate’s tears were streaming down her cheeks, at this conjured vision of
+youth in dire distress.  “Oh dear! oh dear! my poor wee hen!” she sobbed.
+“I’m so sorry for you.”
+
+“Bud! coo-ie! coo-ie!” came the voice of Aunt Ailie along the lobby, but
+Bud was so entranced with the effect of her imaginings that she paid no
+heed, and Kate’s head was wrapped in her apron.
+
+“Don’t cry, Kate; I wouldn’t cry if I was you,” said the child at last,
+soothingly.  “Maybe it’s not true.”
+
+“I’ll greet if I like,” insisted the maid.  “Fancy you in that awful
+shipwreck!  It’s enough to scare anybody from going anywhere.  Oh dear!
+oh dear!” and she wept more copiously than ever.
+
+“Don’t cry,” said Bud again.  “It’s silly to drizzle like that.  Why,
+great Queen of Sheba!  I was only joshing you: it was as calm on that
+ship as a milk sociable.”
+
+Kate drew down the apron from her face and stared at her.  Her meaning
+was only half plain, but it was a relief to know that things had not been
+quite so bad as she first depicted them.  “A body’s the better of a bit
+greet, whiles,” she said philosophically, drying her eyes.
+
+“That’s what I say,” agreed Bud.  “That’s why I told you all that.  Do
+you know, child, I think you and I are going to be great friends.”  She
+said this with the very tone and manner of Alison, whose words they were
+to herself, and turned round hastily and embarrassed at a laugh behind
+her to find her Aunt had heard herself thus early imitated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+IF Molyneux, the actor, was to blame for sending this child of ten on her
+journey into Scotland without convoy, how much worse was his offence that
+he sent no hint of her character to the house of Dyce?  She was like the
+carpet-bag George Jordon found at the inn door one day without a name on
+it, and saying “There’s nothing like thrift in a family,” took home
+immediately, to lament over for a week because he had not the key to open
+it.  There should have been a key to Lennox Brenton Dyce, but Molyneux, a
+man of post-cards and curt and cryptic epistles generally, never thought
+of that, so that it took some days for the folk she came among to pick
+the lock.  There was fun in the process, it cannot be denied, but that
+was because the Dyces were the Dyces; had they been many another folk she
+might have been a mystery for years, and in the long-run spoiled
+completely.  Her mother had been a thousand women in her time,—heroines
+good and evil, fairies, princesses, paupers, maidens, mothers, shy and
+bold, plain or beautiful, young or old, as the play of the week
+demanded,—a play-actress, in a word.  And now she was dead and buried,
+the bright white lights on her no more, the music and the cheering done.
+But not all dead and buried, for some of her was in her child.
+
+Bud was born a mimic.  I tell you this at once, because so many
+inconsistencies will be found in her I should otherwise look foolish to
+present her portrait for a piece of veritable life.  Not a mimic of voice
+and manner only, but a mimic of people’s minds, so that for long—until
+the climax came that was to change her when she found herself—she was the
+echo and reflection of the last person she spoke with.  She borrowed
+minds and gestures as later she borrowed Grandma Buntain’s pelerine and
+bonnet.  She could be all men and all women except the plainly dull or
+wicked,—but only on each occasion for a little while; by-and-by she was
+herself again.
+
+And so it was that for a day or two she played with the phrase and accent
+of Wanton Wully Oliver, or startled her aunts with an unconscious
+rendering of Kate’s Highland accent, her “My stars!” and “Mercy me’s!”
+and “My wee hens!”
+
+The daft days (as we call New Year time) passed—the days of careless
+merriment, that were but the start of Bud’s daft days, that last with all
+of us for years if we are lucky.  The town was settling down; the schools
+were opening on Han’sel Monday, and Bud was going—not to the Grammar
+School after all, but to the Pigeons’ Seminary.  Have patience, and
+by-and-by I will tell about the Pigeons.
+
+Bell had been appalled to find the child, at the age of ten, apparently
+incredibly neglected in her education.
+
+“Of course you would be at some sort of school yonder in America?” she
+had said at an early opportunity, not hoping for much, but ready to learn
+of some hedgerow academy in spite of all the papers said of Yales and
+Harvards and the like.
+
+“No, I never was at school; I was just going when father died,” said Bud,
+sitting on a sofa, wrapt in a cloak of Ailie’s, feeling extremely tall
+and beautiful and old.
+
+“What!  Do you sit there and tell me they did not send you to school?”
+cried her aunt, so stunned that the child delighted in her power to
+startle and amaze.  “That’s America for you!  Ten years old, and not the
+length of your alphabets,—it’s what one might expect from a heathen land
+of niggers, and lynchers, and presidents.  I was the best sewer and
+speller in Miss Mushet’s long before I was ten.  My lassie, let me tell
+you you have come to a country where you’ll get your education!  We would
+make you take it at its best if we had to live on meal.  Look at your
+Auntie Ailie—French and German, and a hand like copperplate; it’s a treat
+to see her at the old scrutoire, no way put about, composing.  Just goes
+at it like lightning!  I do declare if your Uncle Dan was done, Ailie
+could carry on the business, all except the aliments and sequestrations.
+It beats all!  Ten years old and not to know the A B C!”
+
+“Oh, but I do,” said Bud quickly.  “I learned the alphabet off the
+play-bills,—the big G’s first, because there’s so many Greats and Grands
+and Gorgeouses in them.  And then Mrs Molyneux used to let me try to read
+Jim’s press notices.  She read them first every morning sitting up in bed
+at breakfast, and said, ‘My! wasn’t he a great man?’ and then she’d cry a
+little, ’cause he never got justice from the managers, for they were all
+mean and jealous of him.  Then she’d spray herself with the Peau
+d’espagne and eat a cracker.  And the best papers there was in the land
+said the part of the butler in the second act was well filled by Mister
+Jim Molyneux; or among others in a fine cast were J. Molyneux, Ralph
+Devereux, and O. G. Tarpoll.”
+
+“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my poor wee whitterick; but it’s
+all haivers,” said Miss Bell.  “Can you spell?”
+
+“If the words are not too big, or silly ones where it’s ‘ei’ or ‘ie,’ and
+you have to guess,” said Bud.
+
+“Spell cat.”
+
+Bud stared at her incredulously.
+
+“Spell cat,” repeated her aunt.
+
+“K-a-t-t,” said Bud (oh, naughty Bud!).
+
+“Mercy!” cried Bell with horrified hands in the air.  “Off you pack
+to-morrow to the Seminary.  I wouldn’t wonder if you did not know a
+single word of the Shorter Catechism.  Perhaps they have not such a thing
+in that awful heathen land you came from?”
+
+Bud could honestly say she had never heard of the Shorter Catechism.
+
+“My poor neglected bairn,” said her aunt piteously, “you’re sitting there
+in the dark with no conviction of sin, and nothing bothering you, and you
+might be dead to-morrow!  Mind this, that ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify
+God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’  Say that.”
+
+“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever,” repeated
+Bud obediently, rolling her r’s and looking solemn like her aunt.
+
+“Did you ever hear of Robert Bruce, him that watched the spiders?”
+
+Here, too, the naughty Bud protested ignorance.
+
+“He was the saviour of his country,” said Bell.  “Mind that!”
+
+“Why, Auntie, I thought it was George Washington,” said Bud, surprised.
+“I guess if you’re looking for a little wee stupid, it’s me.”
+
+“We’re talking about Scotland,” said Miss Bell severely.  “He saved
+Scotland.  It was well worth while!  Can you do your sums?”
+
+“I can _not_,” said Bud emphatically.  “I hate them.”
+
+Miss Bell said not a word more; she was too distressed at such confessed
+benightedness; but she went out of the parlour to search for Ailie.  Bud
+forgot she was beautiful and tall and old in Ailie’s cloak; she was
+repeating to herself Man’s Chief End with rolling r’s, and firmly fixing
+in her memory the fact that Robert Bruce, not George Washington, was the
+saviour of his country and watched spiders.
+
+Ailie was out, and so her sister found no ear for her bewailings over the
+child’s neglected education till Mr Dyce came in humming the tune of the
+day—“Sweet Afton”—to change his hat for one more becoming to a sitting of
+the Sheriff Court.  He was searching for his good one in what he was used
+to call “the piety press,” for there was hung his Sunday clothes, when
+Bell distressfully informed him that the child could not so much as spell
+cat.
+
+“Nonsense I don’t believe it,” said he.  “That would be very unlike our
+William.”
+
+“It’s true,—I tried her myself!” said Bell.  “She was never at a school:
+isn’t it just deplorable?”
+
+“H’m!” said Mr Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”
+
+“She does not know a word of her Catechism, nor the name of Robert Bruce,
+and says she hates counting.”
+
+“Hates counting!” repeated Mr Dyce, wonderfully cheering up, “that’s
+hopeful; it reminds me of myself.  Forbye its gey like brother William.
+His way of counting was ‘£1.10. in my pocket, £2 that I’m owing some one,
+and 10s. I get to-morrow—that’s £5 I have; what will I buy you now?’  The
+worst of arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination.  Two
+and two’s four and you’re done with it; there’s no scope for either fun
+or fancy as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark
+and swapped their partners by an accident.”
+
+“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still,
+“and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”
+
+“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan—“excuse my grammar,” and he laughed.  “It’s
+an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little
+patches.  I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to
+keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”
+
+But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still
+practising Man’s Chief End, so engrossed in the exercise she never heard
+him enter.  He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.
+
+“Guess who,” said he, in a shrill falsetto.
+
+“It’s Robert Bruce,” said Bud, without moving.
+
+“No,—cold—cold!—guess again,” said her uncle, growling like Giant
+Blunderbore.
+
+“I’ll mention no names,” said she, “but it’s mighty like Uncle Dan.”
+
+He stood in front of her and put on a serious face,
+
+“What’s this I am hearing, Miss Lennox,” said he, “about a little girl
+who doesn’t know a lot of things nice little girls ought to know?”
+
+“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever,” repeated
+Bud reflectively.  “I’ve got that all right, but what does it mean?”
+
+“What does it mean?” said Mr Dyce, a bit taken aback.  “You tell her,
+Bell; what does it mean?  I must not be late for the court.”
+
+“You’re far cleverer than I am,” said Bell.  “Tell her yourself.”
+
+“It means,” said Daniel Dyce the lawyer, seating himself on the sofa
+beside his niece, “that man in himself is a gey poor soul, no’ worth a
+pin, though he’s apt to think the world was made for his personal
+satisfaction.  At the best he’s but an instrument—a harp of a thousand
+strings God bends to hear in His leisure.  He made that harp—the heart
+and mind of man—when He was in a happy hour.  Strings hale and strings
+broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we
+can do’s to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God Who loves fine
+music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He put
+them birling in the void.  To glorify’s to wonder and adore, and who
+keeps the wondering humble heart, the adoring eye, is to God pleasing
+exceedingly.  Sing, lassie, sing, sing, sing, inside ye, even if ye are
+as timmer as a cask.  God knows I have not much of a voice myself, but
+I’m full of nobler airs than ever crossed my rusty thrapple.  To be
+grateful always, and glad things are no worse, is a good song to start
+the morning.”
+
+“Ah, but sin, Dan, sin!” said Bell, sighing, for she always feared her
+own light-heartedness.  “We may be too joco.”
+
+“Say ye so?” he cried, turning to his sister with a flame upon his
+visage.  “By the heavens above us, no!  Sin might have been eternal; each
+abominable thought might have kept in our minds, constant day and night
+from the moment that it bred there; the theft we did might keep
+everlastingly our hand in our neighbour’s kist as in a trap; the knife we
+thrust with might have kept us thrusting for ever and for ever.  But
+no,—God’s good! sleep comes, and the clean morning, and the morning is
+Christ, and every moment of time is a new opportunity to amend.  It is
+not sin that is eternal, it is righteousness, and peace.  Joco!  We
+cannot be too joco, having our inheritance.”
+
+He stopped suddenly, warned by a glance of his sister’s, and turned to
+look in his niece’s face to find bewilderment there.  The mood that was
+not often published by Dan Dyce left him in a flash, and he laughed and
+put his arms round her.
+
+“I hope you’re a lot wiser for my sermon, Bud,” said he; “I can see you
+have pins and needles worse than under the Reverend Mr Frazer on the
+Front.  What’s the American for haivers—for foolish speeches?”
+
+“Hot air,” said Bud promptly.
+
+“Good!” said Dan Dyce, rubbing his hands together.  “What I’m saying may
+seem just hot air to you, but it’s meant.  You do not know the Shorter
+Catechism; never mind; there’s a lot of it I’m afraid I do not know
+myself; but the whole of it is in that first answer to Man’s Chief End.
+Reading and writing, and all the rest of it, are of less importance, but
+I’ll not deny they’re gey and handy.  You’re no Dyce if you don’t master
+them easily enough.”
+
+He kissed her and got gaily up and turned to go.  “Now,” said he, “for
+the law, seeing we’re done with the gospels.  I’m a conveyancing
+lawyer—though you’ll not know what that means—so mind me in your
+prayers.”
+
+Bell went out into the lobby after him, leaving Bud in a curious frame of
+mind, for Man’s Chief End, and Bruce’s spider, and the word “joco,” all
+tumbled about in her, demanding mastery.
+
+“Little help I got from you, Dan!” said Bell to her brother.  “You never
+even tried her with a multiplication table.”
+
+“What’s seven times nine?” he asked her, with his fingers on the handle
+of the outer door, his eyes mockingly mischievous.
+
+She flushed, and laughed, and pushed him on the shoulder.  “Go away with
+you!” said she.  “Fine you ken I could never mind seven times!”
+
+“No Dyce ever could,” said he,—“excepting Ailie.  Get her to put the
+little creature through her tests.  If she’s not able to spell cat at ten
+she’ll be an astounding woman by the time she’s twenty.”
+
+The end of it was that Aunt Ailie, whenever she came in, upon Bell’s
+report, went over the street to Rodger’s shop and made a purchase.  As
+she hurried back with it, bare-headed, in a cool drizzle of rain that
+jewelled her wonderful hair, she felt like a child herself again.  The
+banker-man saw her from his lodging as she flew across the street with
+sparkling eyes and eager lips, the roses on her cheeks, and was sure,
+foolish man! that she had been for a new novel or maybe a cosmetique,
+since in Rodger’s shop they sell books and balms and ointments.  She made
+the quiet street magnificent for a second—a poor wee second, and then,
+for him, the sun went down.  The tap of the knocker on the door she
+closed behind her struck him on the heart.  You may guess, good women, if
+you like, that at the end of the book the banker-man is to marry Ailie,
+but you’ll be wrong; she was not thinking of the man at all at all—she
+had more to do; she was hurrying to open the gate of gold to her little
+niece.
+
+“I’ve brought you something wonderful,” said she to the child—“better
+than dolls, better than my cloak, better than everything; guess what it
+is.”
+
+Bud wrinkled her brows.  “Ah, dear!” she sighed, “we may be too joco!
+And I’m to sing, sing, sing even if I’m as—timmer as a cask, and Robert
+Bruce is the saviour of his country.”  She marched across the room,
+trailing Ailie’s cloak with her, in an absurd caricature of Bell’s brisk
+manner.  Yet not so much the actress engrossed in her performance, but
+what she tried to get a glimpse of what her aunt concealed.
+
+“You need not try to see it,” said Ailie, smiling, with the secret in her
+breast.  “You must honestly guess.”
+
+“Better’n dolls and candies, oh, my!” said Bud; “I hope it’s not the
+Shorter Catechism,” she concluded, looking so grave that her aunt
+laughed.
+
+“It’s not the Catechism,” said Ailie; “try again.  Oh, but you’ll never
+guess!  It’s a key.”
+
+“A key?” repeated Bud, plainly cast down.
+
+“A gold key,” said her aunt.
+
+“What for?” asked Bud.
+
+Ailie sat herself down on the floor and drew the child upon her knees.
+She had a way of doing that which made her look like a lass in her teens;
+indeed, it was most pleasing if the banker-man could just have seen it!
+“A gold key,” she repeated, lovingly, in Bud’s ear.  “A key to a
+garden—the loveliest garden, with flowers that last the whole year round.
+You can pluck and pluck at them and they’re never a single one the less.
+Better than sweet peas!  But that’s not all, there’s a big garden-party
+to be at it—”
+
+“My!  I guess I’ll put on my best glad rags,” said Bud.  “_And_ the hat
+with pink.”  Then a fear came to her face.  “Why, Aunt Ailie, you can’t
+have a garden-party this time of the year,” and she looked at the window
+down whose panes the rain was now streaming.
+
+“This garden-party goes on all the time,” said Ailie.  “Who cares about
+the weather?  Only very old people; not you and I.  I’ll introduce you to
+a lot of nice people—Di Vernon, and—you don’t happen to know a lady
+called Di Vernon, do you, Bud?”
+
+“I wouldn’t know her if she was handed to me on a plate with parsley
+trimmings,” said Bud promptly.
+
+“—Di Vernon, then, and Effie Deans, and Little Nell, and the Marchioness;
+and Richard Swiveller, and Tom Pinch, and the Cranford folks, and Juliet
+Capulet—”
+
+“She must belong to one of the first families,” said Bud.  “I have a kind
+of idea that I have heard of her.”
+
+“And Mr Falstaff—such a naughty man, but nice too!  And Rosalind.”
+
+“Rosalind!” cried Bud.  “You mean Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’?”
+
+Ailie stared at her with astonishment.  “You amazing child!” said she,
+“who told you about ‘As You Like It’?”
+
+“Nobody told me; I just read about her when Jim was learning the part of
+Charles the Wrestler he played on six ’secutive nights in the Waldorf.”
+
+“Read it!” exclaimed her aunt.  “You mean he or Mrs Molyneux read it to
+you.”
+
+“No, I read it myself,” said Bud.
+
+   “‘Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
+   Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
+   Than that of painted pomp?  Are not these woods
+   More free from peril than the envious Court?’”
+
+She threw Aunt Ailie’s cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously
+little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim
+Molyneux.
+
+“I thought you couldn’t read,” said Ailie.  “You little fraud!  You made
+Aunt Bell think you couldn’t spell cat.”
+
+“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud.  “I was
+just pretending.  I’m apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks
+I make Works.  I can read anything; I’ve read books that big it gave you
+cramp.  I s’pose you were only making-believe about that garden, and you
+haven’t any key at all, but I don’t mind; I’m not kicking.”
+
+Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had bought
+to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters—the slim little
+grey-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first lessons.
+She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read its title
+on the cover.  Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not quite at
+her ease for once.
+
+“I’m dre’ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said.  “It was wicked to pretend
+just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble.  Father wouldn’t have
+liked that.”
+
+“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at her
+ease again.  “I’m too glad you’re not so far behind as Aunt Bell
+imagined.  So you like books?  Capital!  And Shakespeare no less!  What
+do you like best, now?”
+
+“Poetry,” said Bud.  “Particularly the bits I don’t understand, but just
+about almost.  I can’t bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once
+I know it all plain and there’s no more to it, I—I—I love to amble on.
+I—why! I make poetry myself.”
+
+“Really?” said Ailie with twinkling eyes.
+
+“Sort of poetry,” said Bud.  “Not so good as ‘As You Like It’—not
+_nearly_ so good, of course!  I have loads of truly truly poetry inside
+me, but it sticks at the bends, and then I get bits that fit, made by
+somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first.  Other times
+I’m the real Winifred Wallace.”
+
+“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie inquiringly.
+
+“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud composedly.  “I’m her.  It’s my—it’s my
+poetry name.  ‘Bud Dyce’ wouldn’t be any use for the magazines; it’s not
+dinky enough.”
+
+“Bless me, child, you don’t tell me you write poetry for the magazines?”
+said her astonished aunt.
+
+“No,” said Bud, “but I’ll be pretty liable to when I’m old enough to wear
+specs.  That’s if I don’t go on the stage.”
+
+“On the stage!” exclaimed Ailie, full of wild alarm.
+
+“Yes,” said the child, “Mrs Molyneux said I was a born actress.”
+
+“I wonder, I wonder,” said Aunt Ailie, staring into vacancy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+DANIEL DYCE had an office up the street at the windy corner facing the
+Cross, with two clerks in it and a boy who docketed letters and ran
+errands.  Once upon a time there was a partner,—Cleland & Dyce the firm
+had been,—but Cleland was a shy and melancholy man whose only hours of
+confidence and gaiety came to him after injudicious drams.  ’Twas patent
+to all how his habits seized him, but nobody mentioned it except in a
+whisper, sometimes as a kind of little accident, for in everything else
+he was the perfect gentleman, and here we never like to see the honest
+gentry down.  All men liked Colin Cleland, and many would share his
+jovial hours who took their law business elsewhere than to Cleland &
+Dyce.  That is the way of the world, too; most men keep their
+jovial-money in a different pocket from where they keep their cash.  The
+time came when it behoved Mr Cleland to retire.  Men who knew the
+circumstances said Dan Dyce paid rather dear for that retirement, and
+indeed it might be so in the stricter way of commerce, but the lawyer was
+a Christian who did not hang up his conscience in the “piety press” with
+his Sunday clothes.  He gave his partner a good deal more than he asked.
+
+“I hope you’ll come in sometimes and see me whiles at night and join in a
+glass of toddy,” said Mr Cleland.
+
+“I’ll certainly come and see you,” said Dan Dyce.  And then he put his
+arm affectionately through that of his old partner, and added, “I would—I
+would ca’ canny wi’ the toddy, Colin,” coating the pill in sweet and
+kindly Scots.  Thank God, we have two tongues in our place, and can speak
+the bitter truth in terms that show humility and love, and not the sense
+of righteousness, dictate.
+
+“Eh!  What for?” said Mr Cleland, his vanity at once in arms.
+
+Dan Dyce looked in his alarmed and wavering eyes a moment, and thought,
+“What’s the use?  He knows himself, they always do!”
+
+“For fear—for fear of fat,” he said, with a little laugh, tapping with
+his finger on his quondam partner’s widening waistcoat.  “There are signs
+of a prominent profile, Colin.  If you go on as you’re doing it will be a
+dreadful expense for watch-guards.”
+
+Colin Cleland at once became the easy-osey man again, and smiled.  “Fat,
+man! it’s not fat,” said he, clapping himself on the waistcoat; “it’s
+information.  Do you know, Dan, for a second, there, I thought you meant
+to be unkind, and it would be devilish unlike you to be unkind.  I
+thought you meant something else.  The breath of vulgar suspicion has
+mentioned drink.”
+
+“It’s a pity that!” said Mr Dyce, “for a whole cask of cloves will not
+disguise the breath of suspicion.”
+
+It was five years now since Colin Cleland retired among his toddy
+rummers, and if this were a fancy story I would be telling you how he
+fell, and fell, and fell; but the truth—it’s almost lamentable—is that
+the old rogue throve on leisure and ambrosial nights with men who were
+now quite ready to give the firm of Daniel Dyce their business, seeing
+they had Colin Cleland all to themselves and under observation.  Trust
+estates and factorages from all quarters of the county came now to the
+office at the windy corner.  A Christian lawyer with a sense of fun,
+unspotted by the world, and yet with a name for winning causes, was what
+the shire had long been wanting.  And Daniel Dyce grew rich.  “I’m making
+money so fast,” he said one day to his sisters (it was before Bud came),
+“that I wonder often what poor souls are suffering for it.”
+
+Said Bell, “It’s a burden that’s easy put up with.  We’ll be able now to
+get a new pair of curtains for the back bedroom.”
+
+“A pair of curtains!” said her brother, with a smile to Ailie.  “Ay, a
+score of pairs if they’re needed, even if the vogue was Valenciennes.
+Your notion of wealth, Bell, is Old Malabar’s—‘Twopence more, and up goes
+the cuddy!’  Woman, I’m fair rolling in wealth.”
+
+He said it with a kind of exultation that brought to her face a look of
+fear and disapproval.  “Don’t, Dan, don’t,” she cried—“don’t brag of the
+world’s dross; it’s not like you.  ‘He that hasteth to be rich, shall not
+be innocent,’ says the Proverbs.  You must be needing medicine.  We
+should have humble hearts.  How many that were high have had a fall!”
+
+“Are you frightened God will hear me and rue His bounty?” said the
+brother in a whisper.  “I’m not bragging; I’m just telling you.”
+
+“I hope you’re not hoarding it,” proceeded Miss Bell.  “It’s not
+wise-like—”
+
+“Nor Dyce-like either,” said Miss Ailie.
+
+“There’s many a poor body in the town this winter that’s needful.”
+
+“I daresay,” said Daniel Dyce coldly.  “The poor we have always with us.
+The thing, they tell me, is decreed by Providence.”
+
+“But Providence is not aye looking,” said Bell.  “If that’s what you’re
+frightened for, I’ll be your almoner.”
+
+“It’s their own blame, you may be sure, if they’re poor.  Improvidence
+and—and drink.  I’ll warrant they have their glass of ale every Saturday.
+What’s ale?  Is there any moral elevation in it?  Its nutritive quality,
+I believe, is less than the tenth part of a penny bap.”
+
+“Oh, but the poor creatures!” sighed Miss Bell.
+
+“Possibly,” said Dan Dyce, “but every man must look after himself; and as
+you say, many a man well off has come down in the world.  We should take
+no risks.  I had Black the baker at me yesterday for £20 in loan to tide
+over some trouble with his flour merchant and pay an account to Miss
+Minto.”
+
+“A decent man, with a wife and seven children,” said Miss Bell.
+
+“Decent or not, he’ll not be coming back borrowing from me in a hurry.  I
+set him off with a flea in his lug.”
+
+“We’re not needing curtains,” said Miss Bell hurriedly; “the pair we have
+are fine.”
+
+Dan finished his breakfast that day with a smile, flicked the crumbs off
+his waistcoat, gave one uneasy glance at Ailie, and went off to business
+humming “There is a Happy Land.”
+
+“Oh, dear me, I’m afraid he’s growing a perfect miser,” moaned Bell when
+she heard the door close behind him.  “He did not use to be like that
+when he was younger and poorer.  Money’s like the toothache, a commanding
+thing.”
+
+Ailie smiled.  “If you went about as much as I do, Bell,” she said, “you
+would not be misled by Dan’s pretences.  And as for Black the baker, I
+saw his wife in Miss Minto’s yesterday buying boots for her children and
+a bonnet for herself.  She called me Miss Ailie, an honour I never got
+from her in all my life before.”
+
+“Do you think—do you think he gave Black the money?” said Bell in a
+pleasant excitation.
+
+“Of course he did.  It’s Dan’s way to give it to some folk with a
+pretence of reluctance, for if he did not growl they would never be off
+his face!  He’s telling us about the lecture that accompanied it as a
+solace to our femininity.  Women, you know, are very bad lenders, and
+dislike the practice in their husbands and brothers.”
+
+“None of the women I know,” protested Bell.  “They’re just as free-handed
+as the men if they had it.  I hope,” she added anxiously, “that Dan got
+good security.  Would it be a dear bonnet, now, that she was getting?”
+
+Ailie laughed,—a ridiculous sort of sister this; she only laughed.
+
+Six times each lawful day Daniel Dyce went up and down the street between
+his house and the office at the windy corner opposite the Cross, the
+business day being divided by an interval of four hours to suit the
+mails.  The town folk liked to see him passing; he gave the street an air
+of occupation and gaiety, as if a trip had just come in with a brass band
+banging at the latest air.  Going or coming, he was apt to be humming a
+tune to himself as he went along with his hands in his outside pockets,
+and it was an unusual day when he did not stop to look in at a shop
+window or two on the way, though they never changed a feature once
+a-month.  To the shops he honoured thus it was almost as good as a big
+turnover.  Before him his dog went whirling and barking, a long alarm for
+the clerks to stop their game of Catch-the-Ten and dip their pens.  There
+were few that passed him without some words of recognition.
+
+He was coming down from the office on the afternoon of the Han’sel Monday
+that started Bud in the Pigeons’ Seminary when he met the nurse, old
+Betty Baxter, with a basket.  She put it down at her feet, and bobbed a
+curtsey, a thing that nowadays you rarely see in Scotland.
+
+“Tuts! woman,” he said to her, lifting the basket and putting it in her
+hand.  “Why need you bother with the like of that?  You and your
+curtseys!  They’re out of date, Miss Baxter, out of date, like the decent
+men that deserved them long ago before my time.”
+
+“No, they’re not out of date, Mr Dyce,” said she; “I’ll aye be minding
+you about my mother; you’ll be paid back some day.”
+
+“Tuts!” said he again, impatient.  “You’re an awful blether: how’s your
+patient, Duncan Gill?”
+
+“As dour as the devil, sir,” said the nurse.  “Still hanging on.”
+
+“Poor man! poor man!” said Mr Dyce.  “He’ll just have to put his trust in
+God.”
+
+“Oh, he’s no’ so far through as all that,” said Betty Baxter.  “He can
+still sit up and take his drop of porridge.  They’re telling me you have
+got a wonderful niece, Mr Dyce, all the way from America.  What a mercy
+for her!  But I have not set eyes on her yet.  I’m so busy that I could
+not stand in the close like the others, watching: what is she like?”
+
+“Just like Jean Macrae,” said Mr Dyce, preparing to move on.
+
+“And what was Jean Macrae like?”
+
+“Oh, just like other folk,” said Mr Dyce, and passed on chuckling, to run
+almost into the arms of Captain Consequence.
+
+“Have you heard the latest?” said Captain Consequence, putting his
+kid-gloved hand on the shoulder of the lawyer, who felt it like a lump of
+ice, for he did not greatly like the man, the smell of whose cigars, he
+said, before he knew they came from the Pilgrim Widow’s, proved that he
+rose from the ranks.
+
+“No, Captain Brodie,” he said coldly.  “Who’s the rogue or the fool this
+time?” but the Captain was too stupid to perceive it.  He stared
+perplexedly.
+
+“I hear,” said he, “the Doctor’s in a difficulty.”
+
+“Is he, is he?” said Mr Dyce.  “That’s a chance for his friends to stand
+by him.”
+
+“Let him take it!” said Captain Consequence, puffing.  “Did he not say to
+me once yonder, ‘God knows how you’re living.’”
+
+“It must be God alone, for all the rest of us are wondering,” said Mr
+Dyce, and left the man to put it in his pipe and smoke it.
+
+Along the street came the two Miss Duffs, who kept the dame school, and
+he saw a hesitation in their manner when they realised a meeting was
+inevitable.  If they had been folk that owed him anything he would not
+have wondered, from their manner, to see them tuck up their skirts and
+scurry down the lane.  Twins they were—a tiny couple, scarcely young,
+dressed always in a douce long-lasting brown, something in their walk and
+colour that made them look like pigeon hens, and long ago conferred on
+them that name in Daniel Dyce’s dwelling.  They met him in front of his
+own door, and seemed inclined to pass in a trepidation.
+
+He took off his hat to them and stood, full of curiosity about Lennox.
+
+“What a lovely winter day!” said Miss Jean, with an air of supplication,
+as if her very life depended on his agreement.
+
+“Isn’t it _perfectly_ exquisite!” said Miss Amelia, who usually picked up
+the bald details of her sister’s conversation and passed them on
+embroidered with a bit of style.
+
+“It’s not bad,” said Mr Dyce, blinking at them, wondering what ailed the
+dears to-day.  They were looking uneasily around them for some way of
+escape; he could almost hear the thump of their hearts, he noted the
+stress of their breathing.  Miss Jean’s eyes fastened on the tree-tops
+over the banker’s garden wall; he felt that in a moment she would spread
+out her wings and fly.  “You have opened the school again,” he said
+simply.
+
+“We started again to-day,” cooed Miss Jean.
+
+“Yes, we resumed to-day,” said Miss Amelia.  “The common round, the daily
+task.  And, oh Mr Dyce—”
+
+She stopped suddenly at the pressure of her sister’s elbow on her own,
+and lowered her eyes, that had for a second shown an appalling area of
+white.  It was plain they were going to fly.  Mr Dyce felt inclined to
+cry “Peas, peas!” and keep them a little longer.
+
+“You have my niece with you to-day?” he remarked.  “What do you think of
+her?”
+
+A look of terror exchanged between them escaped his observation.
+
+“She’s—she’s a wonderful child,” said Miss Jean, nervously twisting the
+strings of a hand-bag.
+
+“A singularly interesting and—and unexpected creature,” said Miss Amelia.
+
+“Fairly bright, eh?” said Mr Dyce.
+
+“Oh, bright!” repeated Miss Jean.  “Bright is not the word for it—is it,
+Amelia?”
+
+“I would rather say brilliant,” said Amelia, coughing, and plucking a
+handkerchief out of her pocket to inhale its perfume and avert a
+threatening swound.  “I hope—we both hope, Mr Dyce, she will be spared to
+grow up a credit to you.  One never knows?”
+
+“That’s it,” agreed Mr Dyce cheerfully.  “Some girls grow up and become
+credits to their parents and guardians, others become reciters, and spoil
+many a jolly party with ‘The Woman of Mumbles Head’ or ‘The Coffee was
+not Strong.’”
+
+“I hope not,” said Miss Jean, not quite understanding: the painful
+possibility seemed to be too much for Miss Amelia; she said nothing, but
+fixed her eyes on the distant tree-tops and gave a little flap of the
+wings of her Inverness cape.
+
+“Peas, peas!” murmured Mr Dyce unconsciously, anxious to hold them longer
+and talk about his niece.
+
+“I beg pardon,” exclaimed Miss Jean, and the lawyer got very red.  “I
+hope at least you’ll like Bud,” he said.  “She’s odd, but—but—but—” he
+paused for a word.
+
+“—sincere,” suggested Miss Jean.
+
+“Yes, I would say sincere—or perhaps outspoken would be better,’ said
+Miss Amelia.
+
+“So clever too,” added Miss Jean.
+
+“Preternaturally!” cooed Miss Amelia.
+
+“Such a delightful accent,” said Miss Jean.
+
+“Like linkèd sweetness long drawn out,” quoted Miss Amelia.
+
+“But—” hesitated Miss Jean.
+
+“Still—” more hesitatingly said her sister, and then there was a long
+pause.
+
+“Oh, to the mischief!” said Mr Dyce to himself, then took off his hat
+again, said “Good afternoon,” and turned to his door.
+
+He was met by Ailie in the lobby; she had seen him from a window speaking
+to the two Miss Duffs.  “What were they saying to you?” she asked with
+more curiosity in her manner than was customary.
+
+“Nothing at all,” said Mr Dyce.  “They just stood and cooed.  I’m not
+sure that a doo-cot is the best place to bring up an eagle in.  How did
+Bud get on with them at school to-day?”
+
+“So far as I can make out, she did not get on at all; she seems to have
+demoralised the school, and driven the Miss Duffs into hysterics, and she
+left of her own accord and came home an hour before closing-time.
+And—and she’s not going back!”
+
+Mr Dyce stood a moment in amazement, then rubbed his hands gleefully.
+“I’m glad to hear it,” said he.  “The poor birdies between them could not
+summon up courage to tell me what was wrong.  I’m sorry for them; if
+she’s not going back, we’ll send them down a present”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+THAT the child should have gone to the dame school at all was due to her
+Auntie Bell.  From the first Miss Ailie had been dubious of the seminary,
+but Bell was terribly domineering; in fact, was neither to hold nor bind,
+and the doo-cot it bode to be.  A product herself of the old dame school
+in the spacious days of Barbara Mushet, whose pupils in white-seam sewing
+and Italian hand were nowadays married to the best, and notable as
+housewives, she deemed it still the only avenue to the character and
+skill that keep those queer folk, men, when they’re married, by their own
+fire-ends.  As for Daniel Dyce, he was, I fear, indifferent how Bud came
+by her schooling, having a sort of philosophy that the gate of gifts is
+closed on us the day we’re born, and that the important parts of the
+curriculum, good or bad, are picked up like a Scots or Hielan’ accent,
+someway in the home.
+
+So Ailie had gone reluctant to the Misses Duff and told them that on the
+morrow the child would start in their academy.  They currookity-cooed at
+the prospect, put past their crocheting, brought out their celebrated
+silver spoons, and made of the afternoon tea a banquet with the aid of a
+seed-cake hurriedly brought from P. & A. MacGlashan’s.  Their home was
+like a stall in a bazaar and smelt of turpentine.  Ailie, who loved wide
+spaces, sat cramped between a laden what-not and a white-enamelled
+spinning-wheel, the feathers of her hat colliding with a fretwork bracket
+on the wall behind her chair, and thinking not unkindly of the creatures,
+wished that she could give them a good shaking.  Oh! they were so prim,
+pernickety, and hopelessly in all things wrong!  She was not very large
+herself, for stature, but in their company she felt gigantic.  And oddly
+there rose in her, too, a sense of gladness that she was of a newer kind
+of women than those gentle slaves, prisoned in their primness, manacled
+by stupid old conceits.  She was glad she was free, that her happy hours
+were not so wasted in futilities, that she saw farther, that she knew no
+social fears, that custom had not crushed her soul, and yet she someway
+liked and pitied them.
+
+“You’ll find her somewhat odd,” she explained as she nibbled the
+seed-cake, with a silly little d’oyley of Miss Jean’s contrivance on her
+knee, and the doves fluttering round her as timid of settling down as
+though they had actual feathers and she were a cat.  “She has got a
+remarkably quick intelligence; she is quite unconventional,—quite unlike
+other children in many respects, and it may be difficult at first to
+manage her.”
+
+“Dear me!” said Miss Jean.  “What a pity she should be so odd!  I suppose
+it’s the American system; but perhaps she will improve.”
+
+“Oh, it’s nothing alarming,” explained Miss Ailie, recovering the d’oyley
+from the floor to which it had slid from her knee, and replacing it with
+a wicked little shake.  “If she didn’t speak much you would never guess
+from her appearance that she knew any more than—than most of us.  Her
+mother, I feel sure, was something of a genius—at least it never came
+from the Dyce side; we were all plain folk, not exactly fools, but still
+not odd enough to have the dogs bite us, or our neighbours cross to the
+other side of the street when they saw us coming.  She died two years
+ago, and when William—when my brother died, Lennox was staying with
+professional friends of himself and his wife, who have been good enough
+to let us have her, much against their natural inclination.”
+
+“The dear!” said Miss Jean, enraptured.
+
+“Quite a sweet romance!” cooed Miss Amelia, languishing.
+
+“You may be sure we will do all we can for her,” continued Miss Jean,
+pecking with unconscious fingers at the crumbs on her visitor’s lap, till
+Ailie could scarcely keep from smiling.
+
+“She will soon feel quite at home among us in our little school,” said
+Miss Amelia.  “No doubt she’ll be shy at first—”
+
+“Quite the contrary!” Ailie assured them, with a little mischievous
+inward glee, to think how likely Bud was to astonish them by other
+qualities than shyness.  “It seems that in America children are brought
+up on wholly different lines from children here; you’ll find a curious
+fearless independence in her.”
+
+The twins held up their hands in amazement, “tcht-tcht-tchting”
+simultaneously.  “_What_ a pity!” said Miss Jean, as if it were a
+physical affliction.
+
+“But no doubt by carefulness and training it can be eradicated,” said
+Miss Amelia, determined to encourage hope.
+
+At that Miss Ailie lost her patience.  She rose to go, with a start that
+sent the doves more widely fluttering than ever in their restless little
+parlour, so crowded out of all comfort by its fretful toys.
+
+“I don’t think you should trouble much about the eradication,” she said
+with some of her brother’s manner at the bar.  “Individuality is not
+painful to the possessor like toothache, so it’s a pity to eradicate it
+or kill the nerve.”
+
+The words were out before she could prevent them; she bit her lips, and
+blushed in her vexation to have said them, but luckily the Pigeons in
+their agitation were not observant.
+
+“Like all the Dyces, a little daft!” was what they said of her when she
+was gone, and they were very different women then, as they put on their
+aprons, rolled up the silver spoons in tissue-paper and put them in a
+stocking of Amelia’s, before they started to their crochet-work again.
+
+It was a bright, expectant, happy bairn that set out next day for the
+school.  No more momentous could have seemed her start for Scotland
+across the wide Atlantic; her aunties, looking after her going down the
+street alone, so confident and sturdily, rued their own arrangement, and
+envied the Misses Duff that were to be blessed all day with her
+companionship.  To Bell it seemed as if the wean were walking out of
+their lives on that broad road that leads our bairns to other knowledge
+than ours, to other dwellings, to the stranger’s heart.  Once the child
+turned at the corner of the church and waved her hand; Miss Ailie took it
+bravely, but oh, Miss Bell!—Miss Bell! she flew to the kitchen and
+stormed at Kate as she hung out at the window, an observer too.
+
+Three-and-twenty scholars were there in the doo-cot of the Duffs—sixteen
+of them girls and the remainder boys, but not boys enough as yet to be in
+the Grammar School.  Miss Jean came out and rang a tea-bell, and Bud was
+borne in on the tide of youth that was still all strange to her.  The
+twins stood side by side behind a desk; noisily the children accustomed
+found their seats, but Bud walked up to the teachers and held out her
+hand.
+
+“Good morning; I’m Lennox Dyce,” she said, before they could get over
+their astonishment at an introduction so unusual.  Her voice, calm and
+clear, sounded to the backmost seat and sent the children tittering.
+
+“Silence!” cried Miss Jean, reddening, with a glance at the delinquents,
+as she dubiously took the proffered hand.
+
+“Rather a nice little school,” said Bud, “but a little stuffy.  Wants air
+some, don’t it?  What’s the name of the sweet little boy in the
+Fauntleroy suit?  It looks as if it would be apt to be Percy.”
+
+She was standing between the twins, facing the scholars; she surveyed all
+with the look of his Majesty’s Inspector.
+
+“Hush-h-h,” murmured Miss Amelia, Miss Jean being speechless.  “You will
+sit here,” and she nervously indicated a place in the front bench.
+“By-and-by, dear, we will see what you can do.”
+
+Bud took her place composedly, and rose with the rest to join in the
+Lord’s Prayer.  The others mumbled it; for her it was a treat to have to
+say it there for the first time in her life in public.  Into the words
+she put interest and appeal; for the first time the doo-cot heard that
+supplication endowed with its appropriate dignity.  And then the work of
+the day began.  The school lay in the way of the main traffic of the
+little town: they could hear each passing wheel and footstep, the sweet
+“chink, chink” from the smithy, whence came the smell of a sheep’s head
+singeing.  Sea-gulls and rooks bickered and swore in the gutters of the
+street; from fields behind came in a ploughman’s whistle as he drove his
+team, slicing green seas of fallow as a vessel cuts the green, green
+wave.  Four-and-twenty children, four-and-twenty souls, fathers and
+mothers of the future race, all outwardly much alike with eyes, noses,
+hands, and ears in the same position, how could the poor Misses Duff know
+what was what in the stuff they handled?  Luckily for their peace of
+mind, it never occurred to them that between child and child there was
+much odds.  Some had blue pinafores and some white; some were freckled
+and some had warts and were wild, and these were the banker’s boys.  God
+only knew the other variations.  ’Twas the duty of the twins to bring
+them all in mind alike to the one plain level.
+
+It was lucky that the lessons of that day began with the Shorter
+Catechism, for it kept the ignorance of Lennox Dyce a little while in
+hiding.  She heard with amazement of Effectual Calling and Justification
+and the reasons annexed to the fifth commandment as stammeringly and
+lifelessly chanted by the others; but when her turn came, and Miss Jean,
+to test her, asked her simply Man’s Chief End, she answered boldly—
+
+“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.”
+
+“Very good! _very_ good indeed!” said the twin encouragingly.  She was
+passing on to the next pupil, when Bud burst out with her own particular
+reason annexed, borrowed from the rapturous explanation of her uncle.
+
+“Man is a harp,” she said as solemnly as he had said it—“a har-r-rp with
+a thousand strings; and we must sing, sing, sing, even if we’re timmer as
+a cask, and be grateful always, and glad in the mornings with things.”
+
+If the whistling ploughman and his team had burst into the schoolroom it
+would have been no greater marvel, brought no more alarm to the breasts
+of the little teachers.  They looked at her as if she had been a witch.
+The other pupils stared, with open mouths.
+
+“What’s that you say, my dear?” said Miss Amelia.  “Did you learn that in
+America?”
+
+“No,” said Bud, “I just found it out from Uncle Dan.”
+
+“Silence!” cried Miss Jean, for now the class was tittering again.  She
+went with her sister behind the black-board, and nervously they communed.
+Bud smiled benignly on her fellows.
+
+Just as disconcerting was her performance in geography.  Had they tested
+her in her knowledge of the United States she might have come out
+triumphantly commonplace; but unfortunately they chose to ask her of
+Scotland, and there her latest teacher had been Kate.
+
+“What are the chief towns in Scotland?” asked Miss Jean.
+
+“Oban, and Glasgow, and ’Tornoway,” replied Bud with a touch of Highland
+accent; and, tired of sitting so long in one place, calmly rose and
+removed herself to a seat beside the Fauntleroy boy, who was greatly put
+about at such a preference.
+
+“You mustn’t move about like that, Lennox,” explained Miss Amelia, taking
+her back.  “It’s not allowed.”
+
+“But I was all pins and needles,” said Bud frankly, “and I wanted to
+speak to Percy.”
+
+“My dear child, his name’s not Percy, and there’s no speaking in school,”
+exclaimed the distressed Miss Amelia.
+
+“No speaking!  Why, you’re speaking all the time,” said the child.  “It
+ain’t—isn’t fair.  Can’t I just get speaking a wee teeny bit to that nice
+girl over there?”
+
+The twins looked at each other in horror: the child was a thousand times
+more difficult than the worst her aunt had led them to expect.  A sudden
+unpleasant impression that their familiar pupils seemed like wooden
+models beside her, came to them both.  But they were alarmed to see that
+the wooden models were forgetting their correct deportment under the
+demoralising influence of the young invader.
+
+Once more they dived behind the black-board and communed.
+
+There were many such instances during the day.  Bud, used for all her
+thinking years to asking explanations of what she did not understand,
+never hesitated to interrogate her teachers, who seemed to her to be
+merely women, like her mother, and Mrs Molyneux, and Auntie Ailie, only a
+little wilted and severe, grotesque in some degree because of their funny
+affected manner, and the crochet that never was out of their hands in
+oral exercises.  She went further, she contradicted them twice, not
+rudely, but as one might contradict her equals.
+
+“You talk to her,” said Miss Jean behind the black-board where they had
+taken refuge again.  “I declare I’ll take a fit if this goes on!  Did you
+ever hear of such a creature?”
+
+Miss Amelia almost cried.  All her fixed ideas of children were shattered
+at a blow.  Here was one who did not in the least degree fit in with the
+scheme of treatment in the doo-cot.  But she went forward with a look of
+great severity.
+
+“Of course, coming from America and all that, and never having been at
+school before, you don’t know,” she said, “but I must tell you that you
+are not behaving nicely—not like a nice little girl at all, Lennox.  Nice
+little girls in school in this country listen, and never say anything
+unless they’re asked.  They are respectful to their teachers, and never
+ask questions, and certainly never contradict them, and—”
+
+“But, please, Miss Duff, I wasn’t contradicting,” explained Bud very
+soberly, “and when respect is called for, I’m there with the goods.  You
+said honor was spelt with a ‘u,’ and I guess you just made a mistake,
+same as I might make myself, for there ain’t no ‘u’ in honor, at least in
+America.”
+
+“I—I—I never made a mistake in all my life,” said Miss Amelia, gasping.
+
+“Oh, Laura!” was all that Bud replied, but in such a tone, and with eyes
+so widely opened, it set half of the other pupils tittering.
+
+“What do you mean by ‘Oh, Laura’?” asked Miss Jean.  “Who is Laura?”
+
+“You can search me,” replied Bud composedly.  “Jim often said ‘Oh,
+Laura!’ when he got a start.”
+
+“It’s not a nice thing to say,” said Miss Jean.  “It’s not at all
+ladylike.  It’s just a sort of profane language, and profane language is
+an ‘abomination unto the Lord.’”
+
+“But it was so like Jim,” said Bud, giggling with recollection.  “If it’s
+slang I’ll stop it,—at least I’ll try to stop it.  I’m bound to be a
+well-off English undefied, you know; poppa—father fixed that.”
+
+The school was demoralised without a doubt, for now the twins were
+standing nervously before Bud and put on equal terms with her in spite of
+themselves, and the class was openly interested and amused—more
+interested and amused than it had ever been at anything that had ever
+happened in the doo-cot before.  Miss Amelia was the first to comprehend
+how far she and her sister had surrendered their citadel of authority to
+the little foreigner’s attack.  “Order!” she exclaimed.  “We will now
+take up poetry and reading.”
+
+Bud cheered up wonderfully at the thought of poetry and reading, but,
+alas! her delight was short-lived, for the reading-book put into her hand
+was but a little further on than Auntie Ailie’s Twopenny.  When her turn
+came to read “My sister Ella has a cat called Tabby.  She is black, and
+has a pretty white breast.  She has long whiskers and a bushy white
+tail,” she read with a tone of amusement that exasperated the twins,
+though they could not explain to themselves why.  What completed Bud’s
+rebellion, however, was the poetry.  “Meddlesome Matty” was a kind of
+poetry she had skipped over in Chicago, plunging straightway into the
+glories of the play-bills and Shakespeare, and when she had read that—
+
+   “One ugly trick has often spoiled
+      The sweetest and the best;
+   Matilda, though a pleasant child,
+      One ugly trick possessed”—
+
+she laughed outright.
+
+“I can’t help it, Miss Duff,” she said when the twins showed their
+distress.  “It looks like poetry, sure enough, for it’s got the jaggy
+edges, but it doesn’t make any zip inside me same as poetry does.  It
+wants biff.”
+
+“What’s ‘zip’ and ‘biff’?” asked Miss Amelia.
+
+“It’s—it’s a kind of tickle in your mind,” said Bud.  “I’m so tired,” she
+continued, rising in her seat, “I guess I’ll head for home now.”  And
+before the twins had recovered from their dumfounderment she was in the
+porch putting on her cloak and hood.
+
+“Just let her go,” said Miss Jean to her sister.  “If she stays any
+longer I shall certainly have a swoon; I feel quite weak.”
+
+And so Bud marched out quite cheerfully, and reached home an hour before
+she was due.  Kate met her at the door.  “My stars! are you home
+already?” she exclaimed, with a look at the town clock.  “You must be
+smart at your schooling when they let you out of the cemetery so soon.”
+
+“It ain’t a cemetery at all,” said Bud, standing unconcernedly in the
+lobby; “it’s just a kindergarten.”
+
+Aunt Ailie bore down on her to overwhelm her in caresses.  “What are you
+home for already, Bud?” she asked.  “It’s not time yet, is it?”
+
+“No,” said Bud, “but I just couldn’t stay any longer.  I’d as lief not go
+back there.  The ladies don’t love me.  They’re Sunday sort of ladies,
+and give me pins and needles.  They smile and smile, same’s it was done
+with a glove-stretcher, and don’t love me.  They said I was using
+profound language, and—and they don’t love me.  Not the way mother and
+Mrs Molyneux and you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan and Kate and Footles
+does.  They made goo-goo-eyes at me when I said the least thing.  They
+had all those poor kiddies up on the floor doing their little bits, and
+they made me read kindergarten poetry—that was the limit!  So I just
+upped and walked.”
+
+The two aunts and Kate stood round her for a moment baffled.
+
+“What’s to be done now?” said Aunt Ailie.
+
+“Tuts!” said Aunt Bell, “give the wean a drink of milk and some bread and
+butter.”
+
+And so ended Bud’s only term in a dame school.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+IT was a saying of Daniel Dyce’s that all the world is under one’s own
+waistcoat.  We have a way of spaeing fortunes in the North, when young,
+in which we count the waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, and say—
+
+  Tinker,
+
+  Tailor,
+
+  Soldier,
+
+  Sailor,
+
+  Rich man,
+
+  Poor man,
+
+  Prodigal, or
+
+  Thief?
+
+Whichever name falls upon the last button tells what is your destiny, and
+after the county corps has been round our way recruiting, I see our
+schoolboys with all their waistcoat buttons, but three at the top,
+amissing.  Dan Dyce had a different formula: he said “Luckiness, Leisure,
+Ill or Well, Good World, Bad World, Heaven or Hell?”
+
+“Not Heaven, Dan!” said Bell.  “The other place I’ll admit, for whiles
+I’m in a furious temper over some trifle;” to which he would answer,
+“Woman! the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
+
+So, I think sometimes, all that’s worth while in the world is in this
+little burgh, except a string quartette and a place called Florence I
+have long been ettling to see if ever I have the money.  In this small
+town is every week as much of tragedy and comedy and farce as would make
+a complete novel full of laughter and tears, that would sell in a jiffy.
+I have started, myself, a score of them—all the essential inspiration got
+from plain folk passing my window, or from hearing a sentence dropped
+among women gossiping round a well.  Many a winter night I come in with a
+fine catch of tales picked up in the by-going, as we say, and light the
+candles in a hurry, and make a gallant dash at “Captain Consequence.
+Chapter I.” or “A Wild Inheritance.  Part I.  The Astounding Mary.”  Only
+the lavishness of the material hampers me: when I’m at “Captain
+Consequence” (which would be a splendid sombre story of an ill life, if I
+ever got beyond Chapter I. and the old scamp’s fondness for his mother),
+my wife runs in with something warm to drink, and tells me Jonathan
+Campbell’s goat has broken into the minister’s garden, and then I’m off
+the key for villainy; there’s a shilling book in Jonathan’s goat herself.
+
+But this time I’m determined to stick by the fortunes of the Dyce family,
+now that I have got myself inside their door.  I hope we are friends of
+that household, dearer to me than the dwellings of kings (not that I have
+cognisance of many).  I hope that no matter how often or how early we rap
+at the brass knocker, or how timidly, Kate will come, and in one breath
+say, “What is’t?  Come in!”  We may hear, when we’re in, people passing
+in the street, and the wild geese call,—wild geese, wild geese! this time
+I will not follow where you tempt to where are only silence and
+dream,—the autumn and the summer days may cry us out to garden and wood,
+but if I can manage it I will lock the door on the inside, and shut us
+snugly in with Daniel Dyce and his household, and it will be well with us
+then.  Yes, yes, it will be well with us then.
+
+The wild-goose cry, heard in the nights, beyond her comprehension, was
+all that Bud Dyce found foreign in that home.  All else was natural and
+familiar and friendly, for all else she knew was love.  But she feared at
+first the “honk, honk” of the lone wild things that burdened her with
+wonder and awe.  Lying in her attic bower at night, they seemed to her
+like sore mistaken wanderers, wind-driven, lost; and so they are, I know.
+Hans Andersen and Grimm for her had given to their kind a forlorn and
+fearsome meaning.  But Kate MacNeill had helped, to some degree, these
+childish apprehensions.
+
+The Highland maid had brought from Colonsay a flesh that crept in
+darkness, a brain with a fantastic maggot in it; she declared to
+goodness, and to Bud sometimes, that she had no life of it with ghosts in
+her small back room.  But Bud was not to let on to her aunties.  Forbye
+it was only for Kate they came, the ghosts; did Bud not hear them last
+night?  Geese!  No, not geese, Kate knew different, and if the thing
+lasted much longer she would stay no more in this town; she would stay
+nowhere, she would just go back to Colonsay.  Not that Colonsay was
+better; there were often ghosts in Colonsay—in the winter-time, and then
+it behoved you to run like the mischief, or have a fine strong lad with
+you for your convoy.  If there were no ghosts in America it was because
+it cost too much to go there on the steamers.  Harken to yon—“Honk,
+honk!”—did ever you hear the like of it?  Who with their wits about them
+in weather like that would like to be a ghost?  And loud above the wind
+that rocked the burgh in the cradle of the hills, loud above the beating
+rain, the creak of doors and rap of shutters in that old house, Bud and
+Kate together in the kitchen heard again the “honk, honk!” of the geese.
+Then it was for the child that she missed the mighty certainty of
+Chicago, that Scotland somehow to her mind seemed an old unhappy place,
+in the night of which went passing Duncan, murdered in his sleep, and
+David Rizzio with the daggers in his breast, and Helen of Kirkconnel Lee.
+The nights but rarely brought any fear for her in spite of poor Kate’s
+ghosts, since the warmth and light and love of the household filled every
+corner of lobby and stair, and went to bed with her.  When she had said
+her prayer the geese might cry, the timbers of the old house crack, Bud
+was lapped in the love of God and man, and tranquil.  But the mornings
+dauntened her often when she wakened to the sound of the six o’clock
+bell.  She would feel, when it ceased, as if all virtue were out of last
+night’s love and prayer.  Then all Scotland and its curious scraps of
+history as she had picked it up weighed on her spirit for a time; the
+house was dead and empty; not ghost nor goose made her eerie, but
+mankind’s old inexplicable alarms.  How deep and from what distant shores
+comes childhood’s wild surmise!  There was nothing to harm her, she knew,
+but the strangeness of the dawn and a craving for life made her at these
+times the awakener of the other dwellers in the house of Dyce.
+
+She would get out of bed and go next door to the room of Ailie, and creep
+in bed beside her to kiss her for a little from her dreams.  To the aunt
+these morning visitations were precious: she would take the bairn to her
+bosom and fall asleep with sighs of content, the immaculate mother.  Bud
+herself could not sleep then for watching the revelation of her lovely
+auntie in the dawn—the cloud on the pillow that turned to masses of hazel
+hair, the cheeks and lips that seemed to redden like flowers as the day
+dawned, the nook of her bosom, the pulse of her brow.
+
+Other mornings Wanton Wully’s bell would send her in to Bell, who would
+give her the warm hollow of her own place in the blankets, while she
+herself got up to dress briskly for the day’s affairs.  “Just you lie
+down there, pet, and sleepy-baw,” she would say, tying her coats with
+trim tight knots.  “You will not grow up a fine, tall, strong girl like
+your Auntie Ailie if you do not take your sleep when you can get it.  The
+morning is only for done old wives like me that have things to do and
+don’t grudge doing them.”
+
+She would chatter away to Bud as she dressed, a garrulous auntie this,
+two things always for her text—the pride of Scotland, and the virtue of
+duty done.  A body, she would say, was sometimes liable to weary of the
+same things to be done each day, the same tasks even-on, fires and food
+and cleansing, though the mind might dwell on great deeds desirable to be
+accomplished, but pleasure never came till the thing was done that was
+the first to hand, even if it was only darning a stocking.  What was Bud
+going to be when she grew up?  Bud guessed she wasn’t going to be
+anything but just a lady.  Ah, yes, but even ladies had to do something
+wise-like; there was Ailie—to go no farther—who could have managed a
+business though her darning was but lumpy.  Even for a lady there was
+nothing nobler than the making of her own bed; besides the doctors said
+it was remarkably efficacious for the figure.
+
+Bud, snug in her auntie’s blankets, only her nose and her bright bead
+eyes showing in the light of the twirly wooden candlestick, guessed Mrs
+Molyneux was the quickest woman to get through work ever she saw: why she
+just waved it to one side and went out to shop or lunch with Jim.
+
+A look of pity for Mrs Molyneux, the misguided, would come to Bell’s
+face, but for those folk in America she never had a word of criticism in
+the presence of the child.  All she could say was America was different.
+America was not Scotland.  And Scotland was not England, though in many
+places they called Scotch things English.
+
+Jim used to say, speaking of father, that a Scotsman was a kind of
+superior Englishman.
+
+Bell wished to goodness she could see the man,—he must have been a clever
+one!
+
+Other mornings again would the child softly open her uncle’s door and he
+would get a terrible fright, crying “Robbers! but you’ll get nothing.  I
+have my watch in my boots, and my money in my mouth.”
+
+She would creep beside him, and in these early hours began her education.
+She was learning Ailie’s calm and curiosity and ambition; she was
+learning Bell’s ideas of duty and the ancient glory of her adopted land;
+from her uncle she was learning many things, of which the least that
+seemed useful at the time was the Lord’s Prayer in Latin.  “Pater Noster
+qui es in coelis”—that and a few hundreds of Trayner’s Latin maxims was
+nearly all of the classic tongue that survived with the lawyer from
+student days.  It was just as good and effective a prayer in English, he
+admitted, but somehow, whiles, the language was so old it brought you
+into closer grips with the original.  Some mornings she would hum to him
+coon songs heard in her former home; and if he was in trim he himself
+would sing some psalm to the tune of Coleshill, French, Bangor, or
+Torwood.  His favourite was Torwood; it mourned so—mourned so!  Or at
+other times a song like “Mary Morison.”
+
+“What are you bumming away at up there the pair of you?” Bell would cry,
+coming to the stair-foot.  “If you sing before breakfast, you’ll greet
+before night!”
+
+“Don’t she like singing in the morning?” Bud asked, nestling beside him,
+and he laughed.
+
+“It’s an old freit—an old superstition,” said he, “that it’s unlucky to
+begin the day too blithely.  It must have been a doctor that started it,
+but you would wonder at the number of good and douce Scots folk, plain
+bodies like ourselves, that have the notion in their mind from infancy,
+and never venture a cheep or chirrup before the day’s well aired.”
+
+“My stars! ain’t she Scotch, Auntie Bell?” said Bud.  “So was father.  He
+would sing any time; he would sing if it broke a tooth; but he was pretty
+Scotch other ways.  Once he wore a pair of kilts to a Cale—to a
+Caledonian Club.”
+
+“I don’t keep a kilt myself,” said her uncle.  “The thing’s not strictly
+necessary unless you’re English and have a Hielan’ shooting.”
+
+“Auntie Bell is the genuine Scotch stuff, I guess!”
+
+“There’s no concealing the fact that she is,” her uncle admitted.  “She’s
+so Scotch that I am afraid she’s apt to think of God as a countryman of
+her own.”
+
+And there were the hours that Ailie gave with delight to Bud’s more
+orthodox tuition.  The back room that was called Dan’s study, because he
+sometimes took a nap there after dinner, became a schoolroom.  There was
+a Mercator’s map of the world on the wall and another of Europe, that of
+themselves gave the place the right academy aspect.  With imagination, a
+map, and the Golden Treasury, you might have as good as a college
+education, according to Ailie.  They went long voyages together on
+Mercator; saw marvellous places; shivered at the poles or languished in
+torrid plains, sometimes before Kate could ring the bell for breakfast.
+There seemed no spot in the world that this clever auntie had not some
+knowledge of.  How eagerly they crossed continents, how ingeniously they
+planned routes!  For the lengths of rivers, the heights of mountains, the
+values of exports, and all the trivial passing facts that mar the great
+game of geography for many childish minds, they had small consideration;
+what they gathered in their travels were sounds, colours, scenes,
+weather, and the look of races.  What adventures they had! as when,
+pursued by elephants and tigers, they sped in a flash from Bengal to the
+Isle of Venice, and saw the green slime of the sea on her steeping
+palaces.  Yes, the world is all for the folk of imagination.  “Love maps
+and you will never be too old or too poor to travel,” was Ailie’s motto.
+She found a hero or a heroine for every spot upon Mercator, and nourished
+so the child in noble admirations.
+
+You might think it would always be the same pupil and the same teacher,
+but no, they sometimes changed places.  If Ailie taught Bud her own love
+for the lyrics that are the best work of men in their hours of
+exaltation, Bud sent Ailie back to her Shakespeare, and sweet were the
+days they spent in Arden or Prospero’s Isle.
+
+It was well with them then; it was well with the woman and the child, and
+they were happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+BUT the Dyces never really knew how great and serious was the charge
+bequeathed to them in their brother William’s daughter till they saw it
+all one night in March in the light of a dozen penny candles.
+
+Lennox had come from a world that’s lit by electricity, and for weeks she
+was sustained in wonder and amusement by the paraffin lamps of Daniel
+Dyce’s dwelling.  They were, she was sure, the oldest kind of light in
+all the world, Aladdin-lights that gleamed of old on caverns of gems,
+till Kate on this particular evening came into the kitchen with the
+week-end groceries.  It was a stormy season—the year of the big winds;
+moanings were at the windows, sobbings in the chimney-heads, and the
+street was swept by spindrift rain.  Bell and Ailie and their brother sat
+in the parlour, silent, playing cards with a dummy hand, and Bud, with
+Footles in her lap, behind the winter-dykes on which clothes dried before
+the kitchen fire, crouched on the fender with a Shakespeare, where almost
+breathlessly she read the great, the glorious Macbeth.
+
+“My stars! what a night!” said Kate.  “The way them slates and
+chimney-cans are flying!  It must be the anti-nuptial gales.  I thought
+every minute would be my next.  Oh towns! towns!  Stop you till I get
+back to Colonsay, and I’ll not leave it in a hurry, I’ll assure you.”
+
+She threw a parcel on the kitchen-dresser, and turned to the light a
+round and rosy face that streamed with clean cooling rain, her hair in
+tangles on her temples and her eyes sparkling with the light of youth and
+adventure,—for to tell the truth she had been flirting at the door a
+while, in spite of all the rain, with some admirer.
+
+Bud was the sort of child whose fingers itch in the presence of unopened
+parcels: in a moment the string was untied from the week-end groceries.
+
+“Candles!” she cried.  “Well, that beats the band!  I’ve seen ’em in
+windows.  What in the world are you going to do with candles?  One, two,
+three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—oh Laura,
+ain’t we grand!”
+
+“What would we do with them but burn them?” said the maid; “we’ll use
+them in the washing-house,” and then she sank into a chair.  “Mercy on
+me, I declare I’m dying!” she exclaimed in a different key, and Bud
+looked round and saw Kate’s face had grown of a sudden very pale.
+
+“Oh dear! what is the matter?” she asked, her eyes large, innocent, and
+anxious.
+
+“Pains,” moaned the maid.  “Pains inside me and all over me, and
+shiverings down the spine of the back.  Oh, it’s a sore thing pain,
+especially when it’s bad!  But don’t—don’t say a word to the mustress;
+I’m not that old, and maybe I’ll get better.”
+
+“Try pain-killer,” recommended Bud.  “And if I was you I’d start just
+here and say a prayer.  Butt right in and I’ll not listen.”
+
+“Pain-killer!—what in all the world’s pain-killer?  I never heard of it.
+And the only prayer I know is ‘My Father which art’ in Gaelic, and
+there’s nothing in it about pains in the spine of the back.  No, no I’ll
+just have to take a tablespoonful of something or other three times
+a-day, the way I did when the doctor put me right in Colonsay.  Perhaps
+it’s just a chill—but oh! I’m sorrowful, sorrowful!” and Kate, the colour
+coming slowly back to her, wept softly to herself, rocking in the kitchen
+chair.  It was sometimes by those odd hysterics that she paid for her
+elations with the lads.
+
+“I know what’s wrong with you,” said Bud briskly, in the manner of Mrs
+Molyneux.  “It’s just the croodles.  Bless you, you poor perishing soul!
+I take the croodles myself when it’s a night like this, and I’m alone.
+The croodles ain’t the least wee bit deadly; you can put them away by
+hustling at your work, or banging an old piano, or reading a story, or
+playing that you’re somebody else—Well, I declare I think I could cure
+you right now with these twelve candles, far better than you’d do by
+shooting drugs into yourself.”
+
+“I never took a single candle in all my life,” said Kate, “far less
+twelve, and I’ll die first”
+
+“Silly!” exclaimed Bud.  “You’d think to hear you speak you were a
+starving Eskimo.  I don’t want you to eat the candles.  Wait a minute.”
+She ran lightly upstairs, and was gone for ten minutes.
+
+Kate’s colour all revived; she forgot her croodles in the spirit of
+anticipation that the child had roused.  “Oh, but she’s the clever one
+that!” she said to herself, drying the rain and tears from her face and
+starting to nibble a biscuit.  “She knows as much as two ministers, and
+still she’s not a bit proud.  Some day she’ll do something desperate.”
+
+When Bud came back she startled the maid by her appearance, for she had
+clad herself, for the first time in Scotland, with a long, thin, copious
+dancing-gown, in which a lady of the vaudeville, a friend of Mrs
+Molyneux’s, had taught her dancing.
+
+“Ain’t this dandy?” she said, closing the kitchen door, and there was a
+glow upon her countenance and a movement of her body that, to the maid’s
+eyes, made her look a little woman.  “Ain’t this bully?  Don’t you stand
+there looking like a dying Welsh rabbit, but help me light them candles
+for the footlights.  Why! I knew there was some use for these old candles
+first time I set eyes on them; they made me think of something I couldn’t
+’zactly think of—made me kind of gay, you know, just as if I was going to
+the theatre.  They’re only candles, but there’s twelve lights to them all
+at once, and now you’ll see some fun.”
+
+“What in the world are you going to do, lassie?” asked the maid.
+
+“I’m going to be a Gorgeous Entertainment; I’m going to be the Greatest
+Agg—Aggregation of Historic Talent now touring the Middle West.  I’m
+Mademoiselle Winifred Wallace of Madison Square Theatre, New York,
+positively appearing here for one night only.  I’m the whole company, and
+the stage manager, and the band, and the boys that throw the bouquets.
+Biff!  I’m checked high: all you’ve got to do is to sit there with your
+poor croodles and feel them melt away.  Let’s light the foot-lights.”
+
+There was a row of old brass bedroom candlesticks on the kitchen-shelf
+that were seldom used now in the house of Dyce, though their polish was
+the glory of Miss Bell’s heart.  The child kilted up her gown, jumped on
+a chair, and took them down with the help of Kate.  She stuck in each a
+candle, and ranged them in a semicircle on the floor, then lit the
+candles and took her place behind them.
+
+“Put out the lamp!” she said to Kate, in the common voice of actors’
+tragedy.
+
+“Indeed and I’ll do nothing of the kind,” said the maid.  “If your Auntie
+Bell comes in she’ll—she’ll skin me alive for letting you play such
+cantrips with her candles.  Forbye, you’re going to do something
+desperate, something that’s not canny, and I must have the lamp behind me
+or I’ll lose my wits.”
+
+“Woman, put out the light!” repeated Bud, with an imperious pointing
+finger, and, trembling, Kate turned down the lamp upon the wall and blew
+down the chimney in the very way Miss Dyce was always warning her
+against.  She gasped at the sudden change the loss of the light made—at
+the sense of something idolatrous and bewitched in the arc of flames on
+her kitchen-floor, each blown inward from the draught of a rattling
+window.
+
+“If it is _buidseachas_—if it is witchcraft of any kind you are on for,
+I’ll not have it,” said Kate firmly.  “I never saw the like of this since
+the old woman in Pennyland put the curse on the Colonsay factor, and she
+had only seven candles.  Dear, dear Lennox, do not do anything desperate;
+do not be carrying on, for you are frightening me out of my judgment.
+I’m—I’m maybe better now, I took a bite at a biscuit; indeed I’m quite
+better, it was nothing but the cold—and a lad out there that tried to
+kiss me.”
+
+Bud paid no heed, but plucked up the edges of her skirt in outstretched
+hands and glided into the last dance she had learned from the vaudeville
+lady, humming softly to herself an appropriate tune.  The candles warmly
+lit her neck, her ears, her tilted nostrils, her brow was high in shadow.
+First she rose on tiptoe and made her feet to twitter on the flags, then
+swayed and swung a little body that seemed to hang in air.  The white
+silk swept around and over her—wings with no noise of flapping feather,
+or swirled in sea-shell coils, that rose in a ripple from her ankles and
+swelled in wide circling waves above her head, revealing her in glimpses
+like some creature born of foam on fairy beaches, and holding the command
+of tempest winds.  Ah, dear me! many and many a time I saw her dance just
+so in her daft days before the chill of wisdom and reflection came her
+way; she was a passion disembodied, an aspiration realised, a happy
+morning thought, a vapour, a perfume of flowers, for her attire had lain
+in lavender.  She was the spirit of Spring, as I have felt it long ago in
+little woods, or seen it in pictures, or heard it in songs; she was an
+ecstasy, she was a dream.
+
+The dog gave a growl of astonishment, then lay his length on the
+hearth-rug, his nose between his paws, his eyes fixed on her.  “I’ll not
+have it,” said the maid piteously.  “At least I’ll not stand much of it,
+for it’s not canny to be carrying-on like that in a Christian dwelling.
+I never did the like of that in all my life.”
+
+“_Every_ move a picture,” said the child, and still danced on, with the
+moan of the wind outside for a bass to her low-hummed melody.  Her
+stretching folds flew high, till she seemed miraculous tall, and to the
+servant’s fancy might have touched the low ceiling; then she sank—and
+sank—and sank till her forehead touched the floor, and she was a flower
+fallen, the wind no more to stir its petals, the rain no more to glisten
+on its leaves.  ’Twas as if she shrivelled and died there, and Kate gave
+one little cry that reached the players of cards in the parlour.
+
+“Hush! what noise was that?” said Ailie, lifting her head.
+
+“It would be Kate clumping across the kitchen-floor in the Gaelic
+language,” said Mr Dyce, pushing his specs up on his brow.
+
+“Nothing but the wind,” said Bell.  “What did you say was trumph?”—for
+that was the kind of player she was.
+
+“It was not the wind, it was a cry; I’m sure I heard a cry.  I hope
+there’s nothing wrong with the little one,” said Ailie, with a throbbing
+heart, and she threw her cards on the table and went out.  She came back
+in a moment, her face betraying her excitement, her voice demanding
+silence.
+
+“Of all the wonders!” said she.  “Just step this way, people, to the
+pantry.”
+
+They rose and followed her.  The pantry was all darkness.  Through its
+partly open door that led into the kitchen they saw their child in the
+crescent of the candles, though she could not see them, as no more could
+Kate, whose chair was turned the other way.  They stood in silence
+watching the strange performance, each with different feelings, but all
+with eeriness, silent people of the placid, old, half-rustic world, that
+lives for ever with realities, and seldom sees the passions
+counterfeited.
+
+Bud had risen, her dark hair looking unnaturally black above her brow,
+and, her dancing done, she was facing the dog and the servant, the only
+audience of whose presence she was aware.
+
+“Toots!” said the maid, relieved that all seemed over, “that’s nothing in
+the way of dancing; you should see them dancing Gillie-Callum over-bye in
+Colonsay!  There’s a dancer so strong there that he breaks the very
+boards.”
+
+Bud looked at her, and yet not wholly at her—through her, with burning
+eyes.
+
+“Hush!” she said, trembling.  “Do you not hear something?” and at that
+moment, high over the town went the “honk, honk” of the wild geese.
+
+“Devil the thing but geeses!” said the maid, whose blood had curdled for
+a second.  The rain swept like a broom along the street, the gutters
+bubbled, the shutters rapped, far above the dwelling went the sound of
+the flying geese.
+
+“Oh, hush, woman, hush!” implored the child, her hands over her ears, her
+figure cowering.
+
+“It’s only the geeses.  What a start you gave me!” said the maid again.
+
+“No, no,” said Bud, “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
+Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the
+ravell’d sleave of care, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great
+nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast—’”
+
+“What do you mean?” cried Kate.
+
+“Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: Glamis hath murder’d
+sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no
+more.”
+
+The child filled each phrase with a travesty of passion; she had seen the
+part enacted.  It was not, be sure, a great performance.  Some words were
+strangely mutilated; but it was a child, and she had more than a child’s
+command of passion—she had feeling, she had heart.
+
+“I cannot look at you!” exclaimed Kate.  “You are not canny, but oh! you
+are—you are majestic!  There was never the like of it in all the isles.”
+
+Bell, in the darkness of the pantry, wept silently at some sense of sin
+in this play-acting on a Saturday night; her brother held her arm
+tightly; Ailie felt a vague unrest and discontent with herself, a touch
+of envy and of shame.
+
+“Please collect the bouquets,” said the child, seating herself on the
+floor with her knees tucked high in her gown.  “Are the croodles all
+gone?”
+
+“It did me a lot of good yon dancing,” said Kate.  “Did you put yon words
+about Macbeth sleep no more together yourself?”
+
+“Yes,” said Bud, and then repented.  “No,” she added hurriedly, “that’s a
+fib; please, God, give me a true tongue.  It was made by Shakespeare—dear
+old Will!”
+
+“I’m sure I never heard of the man in all my life before; but he must
+have been a bad one.”
+
+“Why, Kate, you are as fresh as the mountain breeze,” said Bud.  “He was
+Great!  He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, a poor boy, and went to London
+and held horses outside the theatre door, and then wrote plays so grand
+that only the best can act them.  He was—he was not for an age, but all
+the time.”
+
+She had borrowed the lesson as well as the manner of Auntie Ailie, who
+smiled in the dark of the pantry at this glib rendering of herself.
+
+“Oh, I should love to play Rosalind,” continued the child.  “I should
+love to play everything.  When I am big, and really Winifred Wallace, I
+will go all over the world and put away people’s croodles same as I did
+yours, Kate, and they will love me; and I will make them feel real good,
+and sometimes cry—for that is beautiful too.  I will never rest, but go
+on, and on, and on; and everywhere everybody will know about me—even in
+the tiny minstrel towns where they have no or’nary luck but just coon
+shows, for it’s in these places croodles must be most catching.  I’ll go
+there and play for nothing, just to show them what a dear soul Rosalind
+was.  I want to grow fast, fast!  I want to be tall like my Auntie Ailie,
+and lovely like my dear Auntie Ailie, and clever like my sweet sweet Aunt
+Ailie.”
+
+“She’s big enough and bonny enough, and clever enough in some things,”
+said the maid; “but can she sew like her sister!—tell me that!”
+
+“Sew!” exclaimed the child, with a frown.  “I hate sewing.  I guess
+Auntie Ailie’s like me, and feels sick when she starts a hem and sees how
+long it is, and all to be gone over with small stitches.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed I do,” whispered Ailie in the pantry, and she was
+trembling.  She told me later how she felt of her conviction then that
+for her the years of opportunity were gone, the golden years that had
+slipped past in the little burgh town without a chance for her to grasp
+their offerings.  She told me of her resolution there and then that this
+child, at least, should have its freedom to expand.
+
+Bud crept to the end of the crescent of her footlights and blew out the
+candles slowly one by one.  The last she left a-light a little longer,
+and, crouched upon the floor, she gazed with large and dreaming eyes into
+its flame as if she read there.
+
+“It is over now,” said Mr Dyce in a whisper to his sisters, and, with his
+hands on their shoulders led them back into the parlour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+SHE was wayward, she was passionate, she was sometimes wild.  She was not
+what, in the Pigeons’ Seminary, could be called a good child, for all her
+sins were frankly manifest, and she knew no fear nor naughty stratagem;
+her mind, to all but Kate, was open as the day, and there it was the
+fault of honest Kate’s stupidity.  But often Miss Bell must be moaning at
+transgressions almost harmless in themselves, yet so terribly unlike a
+Christian bairn, as when Bud spent an afternoon in a tent with some gipsy
+children, changed clothes with them the better to act a part, and stormed
+because she could not have them in to tea with her.  Or when she asked
+Lady Anne, bazaar-collecting in the house of Dyce, if she ever had had a
+proposal.  It was a mercy that Lady Anne that very week had had one, and
+was only too pleased to tell of it and say she had accepted.
+
+“Then _you’re_ safe out of the woods,” said Bud gravely.  “There’s our
+Kate, she hasn’t had a proposal yet, and I guess she’s on the slopey side
+of thirty.  It must be dre’ffle to be as old—as old as a house and have
+no beau to love you.  It must be ’scrutiating.”
+
+Lady Anne let her eyes turn for a moment on the sisters Dyce, and the
+child observed and reddened.
+
+“Oh! Auntie Bell!” she said quickly.  “Auntie Bell had heaps and heaps of
+beaux all dying to marry her, but she gave them the calm cold eye and
+said she had to cling to Uncle Dan.  It was very noble of her, wasn’t
+it?”
+
+“Indeed it was!” admitted Lady Anne, very much ashamed of herself.
+
+“And Auntie Ailie is not on the slopey side of thirty,” continued Bud,
+determined to make all amends.  “She’s young enough to love dolls.”
+
+It was Bell who censured her for this dreadful behaviour.  “You are a
+perfect torment, Lennox,” she said, at the first opportunity.  “A bairn
+like you must not be talking about beaux, and love, and proposals, and
+nonsense of that kind,—it’s fair ridiculous.”
+
+“Why, I thought love was the Great Thing!” exclaimed Bud, much
+astonished.  “It’s in all the books, there’s hardly anything else, ’cept
+when somebody is murdered and you know that the man who did it is the
+only one you don’t suspect.  Indeed, Auntie, I thought it was the Great
+Thing!”
+
+“And so it is, my dear,” said Ailie.  “There’s very little else in all
+the world, except—except the children,” and she folded her niece in her
+arms.  “It is the Great Thing; it has made Lady Anne prettier than ever
+she was in her life before, it has made her brighter, humbler, gentler,
+kinder.  God bless her, I hope she will be happy.”
+
+“But it was very wrong; it was a kind of fib for you to talk about me
+having lots of lads in my time,” said Auntie Bell.  “You do not know
+whether I had or not.”
+
+Bud looked at her and saw a flush on her face.  “I think,” said she, “the
+beaux must have been very stupid, then.  But I guess there must have been
+one, Auntie Bell, and you have forgotten all about him.”  And at that
+Miss Bell went hurriedly from the room, with a pretence that she heard a
+pot boil over, and Ailie in a low voice told her niece all about Bell’s
+beau, deep drowned in the Indian Ocean.
+
+For days after that the child was tender with her elder aunt, and made a
+splendid poem in blank verse upon the late Captain James Murray, which
+Bell was never to see, but Ailie treasured.  For days was she angelic
+good.  Her rages never came to fever heat.  Her rebellions burned
+themselves out in her bosom.  Nobly she struggled with Long Division and
+the grammar that she abominated; very meekly she took censure for
+copy-books blotted and words shamefully misspelled in Uncle Daniel’s
+study.  Some way this love that she had thought a mere amusement, like
+shopping in Chicago, took a new complexion in her mind—became a dear and
+solemn thing, like her uncle’s Bible readings, when, on Sunday nights at
+worship in the parlour, he took his audience through the desert to the
+Promised Land, and the abandoned street was vocal with domestic psalm
+from the Provost’s open windows.  She could not guess—how could she, the
+child?—that love has its variety.  She thought there was but the one love
+in all the world,—the same she felt herself for most things,—a gladness
+and agreement with things as they were.  And yet at times in her reading
+she got glimpses of love’s terror and empire, as in the stories of
+Othello and of Amy Robsart, and herself began to wish she had a lover.
+She thought at first of Uncle Dan; but he could not be serious, and she
+had never heard him sigh,—in him was wanting some remove, some mystery.
+What she wanted was a lover on a milk-white steed, a prince who was “the
+flower o’ them a’,” as in Aunt Ailie’s song “Glenlogie”; and she could
+not imagine Uncle Dan with his spectacles on riding any kind of steed,
+though she felt it would be nice to have him with her when the real
+prince was there.
+
+Do you think it unlikely that this child should have such dreams?  Ah,
+then, you are not of her number, or you have forgotten.  She never
+forgot.  Many a time she told me in after-years of how in the attic
+bower, with Footles snug at her feet, she conjured up the lad on the
+milk-white steed, not so much for himself alone, but that she might act
+the lady-love.  And in those dreams she was tall and slender, sometimes
+proud, disdainful, wounding the poor wretch with sharp words and cold
+glances; or she was meek and languishing, sighing out her heart even in
+presence of his true-love gifts of candy and P. & A. MacGlashan’s penny
+tarts.  She walked with him in gardens enchanted; they sailed at nights
+over calm moonlit seas, and she would be playing the lute.  She did not
+know what the lute was like; but it was the instrument of love, and had a
+dulcet sound, like the alto flutes in the burgh band.
+
+But, of course, no fairy prince came wooing Daniel Dyce’s little niece,
+though men there were in the place—elderly and bald, with married
+daughters—who tried to buy her kisses for sixpences and sweets, and at
+last she felt vicariously the joys of love by conducting the affairs of
+Kate.
+
+Kate had many wooers,—that is the solace of her class.  They liked her
+because she was genial and plump, with a flattering smile and a soft
+touch of the Gaelic accent that in the proper key and hour is the thing
+to break hearts.  She twirled them all round her little finger, and Bud
+was soon to see this and to learn that the maid was still very far from
+the slopey side of thirty.  But Kate, too, had her dreams—of some misty
+lad of the mind, with short, curled hair, clothes brass-buttoned, and a
+delicious smell of tar—something or other on a yacht.  The name she had
+endowed him with was Charles.  She made him up from passing visions of
+seamen on the quays, and of notions gleaned from her reading of penny
+novelettes.
+
+One week-night Bud came on her in the kitchen dressed in her Sunday
+clothes and struggling with a spluttering pen.
+
+“Are you at your lessons too?” said the child.  “You naughty Kate!
+there’s a horrid blot.  No lady makes blots.”
+
+“It wasn’t me, it was this devilish pen; besides, I’m not a lady,” said
+Kate, licking the latest blot with her tongue and grimacing.  “What way
+do you spell weather?”
+
+“W-e-t-h-e-r,” said Bud.  “At least, I think that’s the way! but I’d best
+run and ask Aunt Ailie,—she’s a speller from Spellerville.”
+
+“Indeed and you’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried the maid, alarmed and
+reddening.  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, Lennox, because—I’m writing
+to Charles.”
+
+“A love-letter!  Oh, I’ve got you with the goods on you!” exclaimed Bud,
+enchanted.  “And what are you doing with your hurrah clothes on?”
+
+“I like to put on my Sunday clothes when I’m writing Charles,” said the
+maid, a little put-about.  “Do you think it’s kind of daft?”
+
+“It’s not daft at all, it’s real ’cute of you; it’s what I do myself when
+I’m writing love-letters, for it makes me feel kind of grander.  It’s
+just the same with poetry; I simply can’t make sure enough poetry unless
+I have on a nice frock and my hands washed.”
+
+“_You_ write love-letters!” said the maid, astounded.
+
+“Yes, you poor perishing soul!” retorted Bud.  “And you needn’t yelp.
+I’ve written scores of love-letters without stopping to take breath.
+Stop! stop!” she interrupted herself, and breathed an inward little
+prayer.  “I mean that I write them—well, kind of write them—in my mind.”
+But this was a qualification beyond Kate’s comprehension.
+
+“Then I wish you would give me a hand with this one,” said she
+despairingly.  “All the nice words are so hard to spell, and this is such
+a bad pen.”
+
+“They’re _all_ bad pens; they’re all devilish,” said Bud, from long
+experience.  “But I’d love to help you write that letter.  Let me
+see—pooh! it’s dreffle bad, Kate.  I can’t read a bit of it, almost.”
+
+“I’m sure and neither can I,” said Kate, distressed.
+
+“Then how in the world do you expect Charles to read it?” asked Bud.
+
+“Oh, he’s—he’s a better scholar than me,” said Kate complacently.  “But
+you might write this one for me.”
+
+Bud washed her hands, took a chair to the kitchen table, threw back her
+hair from her eyes, and eagerly entered into the office of
+love-letter-writer.  “What will I say to him?” she asked.
+
+“My dear, dear Charles,” said the maid, who at least knew so much.
+
+“My adorable Charles,” said Bud, as an improvement, and down it went with
+the consent of the dictator.
+
+“I’m keeping fine, and I’m very busy,” suggested Kate, upon deliberation.
+“The weather is capital here at present, and it is a good thing, for the
+farmers are busy with their hay.”
+
+Bud sat back and stared at her in amazement.  “Are you sure this is for a
+Charles?” she asked.  “You might as well call him Sissy and talk frocks.
+Why! you must tell him how you love him.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t like,” said Kate, confused.  “It sounds so—so bold and
+impudent when you put it in the English and write it down.  But please
+yourself; put down what you like, and I’ll be dipping the pen for you.”
+
+Bud was not slow to take the opportunity.  For half an hour she sat at
+the kitchen table and searched her soul for fitting words that would
+convey Kate’s adoration.  Once or twice the maid asked what she was
+writing, but all she said was “Don’t worry, Kate.  I’m right in the
+throes.”  There were blots and there were erasions, but something like
+this did the epistle look when it was done:—
+
+    “MY ADORABLE CHARLES,—I am writeing this letter to let you know how
+    much I truly love you.  Oh Charles, dear, you are the Joy of my
+    heart.  I am thinking of you so often, often, till my Heart just
+    aches.  It is lovely wether here at present.  Now I will tell you all
+    about the Games.  They took place in a park near here Friday and
+    there was seventeen beautiful dancers.  They danced to give you
+    spassums.  One of them was a Noble youth.  He was a Prince in his own
+    write, under Spells for sevn years.  When he danced, lo and behold he
+    was the admiration of all Beholders.  Alas! poor youth.  When I say
+    alas I mean that it was so sad being like that full of Spells in the
+    flower of his youth.  He looked at me so sad when he was dancing, and
+    I was so glad.  It was just like money from home.  Dear Charles, I
+    will tell you all about myself.  I am full of goodness most the time
+    for God loves good people.  But sometimes I am not and I have a
+    temper like two crost sticks when I must pray to be changed.  The
+    dancing gentleman truly loves me to distruction.  He kissed my hand
+    and hastily mountain his noble steed, galoped furiously away.  Ah,
+    the coarse of true love never did run smooth.  Perhaps he will fall
+    upon the forein plain.  Dearest Charles—adorable—I must now tell you
+    that I am being educated for my proper station in life.  There is
+    Geograpy, and penmanship with the right commas, and Long Division and
+    conjunctives which I abomiate.  But my teacher, a sweet lady named
+    Miss Alison Dyce, says they are all truly refining.  Oh I am weary,
+    weary, he cometh not.  That is for you, darling Charles, my own.—Your
+    true heart love,
+
+                                                           KATE MACNEILL.”
+
+“Is that all right?” asked Bud anxiously.
+
+“Yes; at least it’ll do fine,” said the maid, with that Highland
+politeness that is often so bad for business.  “There’s not much about
+himself in it, but och! it’ll do fine.  It’s as nice a letter as ever I
+saw: the lines are all that straight.”
+
+“But there’s blots,” said Bud regretfully.  “There oughtn’t to be blots
+in a real love-letter.”
+
+“Toots! just put a cross beside each of them, and write ‘this is a
+kiss,’” said Kate, who must have had some previous experience.  “You
+forgot to ask him how’s his health, as it leaves us at present.”
+
+So Bud completed the letter as instructed.  “Now for the envelope,” said
+she.
+
+“I’ll put the address on it myself,” said Kate, confused.  “He would be
+sure somebody else had been reading it if the address was not in my hand
+of write,”—an odd excuse, whose absurdity escaped the child.  So the maid
+put the letter in the bosom of her Sunday gown against her heart, where
+meanwhile dwelt the only Charles.  It is, I sometimes think, where we
+should all deposit and retain our love-letters; for the lad and lass, as
+we must think of them, have no existence any more than poor Kate’s
+Charles.
+
+Two days passed.  Often in those two days would Bud come, asking
+anxiously if there was any answer yet from Charles.  As often the maid of
+Colonsay reddened, and said with resignation there was not so much as the
+scrape of a pen.  “He’ll be on the sea,” she explained at last, “and not
+near a post-office.  Stop you till he gets near a post-office, and you’ll
+see the fine letter I’ll get.”
+
+“I didn’t know he was a sailor,” said Bud.  “Why, I calculated he was a
+Highland chieftain or a knight, or something like that.  If I had known
+he was a sailor I’d have made that letter different.  I’d have loaded it
+up to the nozzle with sloppy weather, and said, Oh, how sad I was—that’s
+you, Kate—to lie awake nights thinking about him out on the heaving
+billow.  Is he a captain?”
+
+“Yes,” said Kate promptly.  “A full captain in the summer time.  In the
+winter he just stays at home and helps on his mother’s farm.  Not a cheep
+to your aunties about Charles, darling Lennox,” she added anxiously.
+“They’re—they’re that particular!”
+
+“I don’t think you’re a true love at all,” said Bud, reflecting on many
+interviews at the kitchen window and the back-door.  “Just think of the
+way you make goo-goo eyes at the letter-carrier, and the butcher’s man,
+and the ashpit gentleman.  What would Charles say?”
+
+“Toots! I’m only putting by the time with them,” explained the maid.
+“It’s only a diversion.  When I marry I will marry for my own
+conveniency, and the man for me is Charles.”
+
+“What’s the name of his ship?” asked the child.
+
+“The _Good Intent_,” said Kate, who had known a skiff of the name in
+Colonsay.  “A beautiful ship, with two yellow lums, and flags to the
+masthead.”
+
+“That’s fine and fancy!” said Bud.  “There was a gentleman who loved me
+to destruction, coming over on the ship from New York, and loaded me with
+candy.  He was not the captain, but he had gold braid everywhere, and his
+name was George Sibley Purser.  He promised he would marry me when I made
+a name for myself, but I ’spect Mister J. S. Purser’ll go away and
+forget.”
+
+“That’s just the way with them all,” said Kate.
+
+“I don’t care, then,” said Bud.  “I’m all right; I’m not kicking.”
+
+Next day the breakfast in the house of Dyce was badly served, for Kate
+was wild to read a letter that the post had brought, and when she opened
+it, you may be sure Bud was at her shoulder.
+
+    “DEAREST KATE [it said],—I love you truly and I am thinking of you
+    most the time.  Thank God we was all safed.  Now I will tell you all
+    about the Wreck.  The sea was mountains high, and we had a cargo of
+    spise and perils from Java on the left-hand side the map as you go to
+    Australia.  When the Pirite ship chased us we went down with all
+    hands.  But we constrickted a raft and sailed on and on till we had
+    to draw lots who would drink the blood.  Just right there a sailor
+    cried ‘A sail, A sail,’ and sure enough it was a sail.  And now I
+    will tell you all about Naples.  There is a monsterious mountain
+    there, or cone which belches horrid flames and lavar.  Once upon a
+    time it belched all over a town by the name of Pompy and it is there
+    till this very day.  The bay of naples is the grandest in the world
+    it is called the golden horn.  Dearest Katherine, I am often on the
+    mast at night.  It is cold and shakey in that place and oh how the
+    wind doth blow, but I ring a bell and say alls well which makes the
+    saloon people truly glad.  We had five stow-ways.  One of them was a
+    sweet fair-haired child from Liverpool, he was drove from home.  But
+    a good and beautious lady, one of the first new england families is
+    going to adopt him and make him her only air.  How beautiful and
+    bright he stood as born to rule the storm.  I weary for your letters
+    darling Katherine.—Write soon to your true love till death,
+
+                                                                “CHARLES.”
+
+Kate struggled through this extraordinary epistle with astonishment.
+“Who in the world is it from?” she asked Bud.
+
+“Charles, stupid,” said Bud, astonished that there should be any doubt
+about that point.  “Didn’t I—didn’t we write him the other night?  It was
+up to him to write back, wasn’t it?”
+
+“Of course,” said Kate, very conscious of that letter still unposted,
+“but—but he doesn’t say Charles anything, just Charles.  It’s a daft-like
+thing not to give his name; it might be anybody.  There’s my Charles, and
+there’s Charles Maclean from Oronsay,—what way am I to know which of them
+it is?”
+
+“It’ll be either or eyether,” said Bud.  “Do you know Charles Maclean?”
+
+“Of course I do,” said the maid.  “He’s following the sea, and we were
+well acquaint.”
+
+“Did he propose to you?” asked Bud.
+
+“Well, he did not exactly propose,” admitted Kate, “but we sometimes went
+a walk together to the churchyard on a Sunday, and you know yourself what
+that means out in Colonsay.  I’ll just keep the letter and think of it.
+It’s the nicest letter I ever got, and full of information.  It’s Charles
+Maclean, I’ll warrant you, but he did not use to call me Katherine—he
+just said Kate, and his face would be as red as anything.  Fancy him
+going down with all hands!  My heart is sore for him,” and the maid there
+and then transferred her devotion from the misty lad of her own
+imagination to Charles Maclean of Oronsay.
+
+“You’ll help me to write him a letter back to-night,” she said.
+
+“Yes, indeed, I’ll love to,” said the child wearily.  But by the time the
+night came on, and Wanton Wully rang his curfew bell, and the rooks came
+clanging home to the tall trees of the forest, she was beyond all
+interest in life or love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+WANTON WULLY only briefly rang the morning bell, and gingerly, with
+tight-shut lips and deep nose breathings, as if its loud alarm could so
+be mitigated.  Once before he had done it just as delicately—when the
+Earl was dying, and the bell-ringer, uncertain of his skill to toll, when
+the time came, with the right half-minute pauses, grieved the town and
+horrified the Castle by a rehearsal in the middle of a winter night.  But
+no soul of mercy is in brazen bells that hang aloof from man in lofty
+steeples, and this one, swung ever so gently, sullenly
+boomed—boomed—boomed.
+
+“Oh, to the devil wi’ ye!” said Wanton Wully, sweating with vexation.
+“Of all the senseless bells!  A big, boss bluiter!  I canna compel nor
+coax ye!” and he gave the rope one vicious tug that brought it, broken,
+round his ears; then went from the church into the sunny, silent, morning
+street, where life and the day suspended.
+
+In faith! a senseless bell, a merciless bell, waking folk to toil and
+grief.  Dr Brash and Ailie heavy-eyed, beside the bed in the attic bower,
+shivered at the sound of it, and looked with fear and yearning at the
+sleeping child.
+
+Bud moved her head from side to side a little on the pillow, with a
+murmur from her parched lips, and there was a flicker of the eyelids—that
+was all.  Between her and the everlasting swound, where giddily swings
+the world and all its living things, there seemed no more than a sheet of
+tissue-paper: it was as if a breath of the tender morning air would
+quench the wavering flame that once was joy and Lennox Dyce.  The heart
+of Auntie Ailie rose clamouring in her bosom; her eyes stung with the
+brine of tears restrained, but she clenched her teeth that she might
+still be worthy of the doctor’s confidence.
+
+He saw it, and put out his hand and pressed her shoulder, a fat
+old-fashioned man, well up in years, with whiskers under his chin like a
+cravat, yet beautiful as a prince to Ailie, for on him all her hopes were
+cast.  “They call me agnostic—atheist even, whiles, I hear,” he had said
+in the midst of their vigil; “and, indeed, I’m sometimes beat to get my
+mind beyond the mechanism, but—h’m!—a fine child, a noble child; she was
+made for something—h’m!  That mind and talent—h’m!—that spirit—h’m!—the
+base of it was surely never yon grey stuff in the convolutions.”  And
+another time the minister had come in (the folk in the street were
+furious to see him do it!), and timidly suggested prayer.  “Prayer!” said
+Dr Brash, “before this child, and her quite conscious!  Man, what in
+God’s own name are we doing here, this—h’m!—dear good lady and I, but
+fever ourselves with sleepless, silent prayer?  Do you think a proper
+prayer must be official?  There’s not a drop of stuff in a druggist’s
+bottle but what’s a solution of hope and faith and—h’m!—prayer.
+Con-found it, sir!”
+
+He put out his hand and pressed her on the shoulder, and never said a
+word.  Oh, the doctors! the doctors!  Hale men and hearty, we can see
+their shortcomings and can smile at them, but when the night-light burns
+among the phials!
+
+It was the eighth day after Kate, with a face of clay, and her sleeves
+rolled up, and the dough still on her elbows as she had come from the
+baking-board, burst upon the doctor in his surgery with the cry, “Dr
+Brash, Dr Brash! ye’re to haste ye and come at once to the wee one!”  He
+had gone as nearly on the wings of the wind as a fat man may in
+carpet-slippers, and found a distracted family round the fevered child.
+
+“Tut, tut, lassie,” said he, chucking her lightly under the chin.  “What
+new prank is this, to be pretending illness?  Or if it’s not a let-on,
+I’ll be bound it’s MacGlashan’s almond tablet.”
+
+“It’s these cursèd crab-apples in the garden; I’m sure it’s the
+crab-apples, doctor,” said Miss Bell, looking ten years older than her
+usual.
+
+“H’m! I think not,” said Dr Brash more gravely, with his finger on the
+pulse.
+
+“It’s bound to be,” said Bell, piteous at having to give up her only
+hope.  “Didn’t you eat some yesterday, pet, after I told you that you
+were not for your life to touch them?”
+
+“No,” said Bud, with hot and heavy breathing.
+
+“Then why didn’t ye, why didn’t ye; and then it might have been the
+apples?” said poor Miss Bell.  “You shouldn’t have minded me; I’m aye so
+domineering.”
+
+“No, you’re not,” said Bud, and wanly smiling.
+
+“Indeed I am; the thing’s acknowledged, and you needn’t deny it,” said
+her auntie.  “I’m desperate domineering to you.”
+
+“Well, I’m—I’m not kicking,” said Bud.  It was the last cheerful
+expression she gave utterance to for many days.
+
+Wanton Wully was not long the only one that morning in the sunny street.
+Women came out, unusually early, as it seemed, to beat their basses; but
+the first thing that they did was to look at the front of Daniel Dyce’s
+house with a kind of terror lest none of the blinds should be up, and Mr
+Dyce’s old kid glove should be off the knocker.  “Have you heard what way
+she is keeping to-day?” they asked the bell-man.
+
+“Not a cheep!” said he.  “I saw Kate sweepin’ out her door-step, but I
+couldna ask her.  That’s the curse of my occupation; I wish to goodness
+they had another man for the grave-diggin’.”
+
+“You and your graves!” said the women.  “Who was mentioning them?”
+
+He stood on the syver-side and looked at the blank front of Daniel Dyce’s
+house with a gloomy eye.  “A perfect caution!” he said, “that’s what she
+was—a perfect caution!  She called me Mr Wanton and always asked me how
+was my legs.”
+
+“Is there anything wrong with your legs?” said one of the women.
+
+“Whiles a weakness,” said Wanton Wully, for he was no hypocrite.  “Her
+uncle tellt me once it was a kind o’ weakness that they keep on gantrys
+down in Maggie White’s.  But she does not understand—the wee one; quite
+the leddy! she thought it was a kind o’ gout.  Me! I never had the
+gout,—I never had the money for it, more’s the pity.”
+
+He went disconsolate down the street to get his brush and barrow, for he
+was, between the morning bell and breakfast-time, the burgh’s Cleansing
+Department.  Later—till the middle of the day—he was the Harbour-Master,
+wore a red-collared coat and chased the gulls from the roofs of the
+shipping-boxes and the boys from the slip-side where they might fall in
+and drown themselves; his afternoons had half a dozen distinct official
+cares, of which, in that wholesome air, grave-digging came seldomest.
+This morning he swept assiduously and long before the house of Daniel
+Dyce.  Workmen passing yawning to their tasks in wood and garden, field
+and shed, looked at the muffled knocker and put the question; their
+wives, making, a little later, a message to the well, stopped too, put
+down their water-stoups, and speculated on the state of things within.
+Smoke rose from more than one chimney in the Dyces’ house.  “It’s the
+parlour fire,” said Wanton Wully.  “It means breakfast.  Cheery Dan, they
+say, aye makes a hearty breakfast; I like to see the gift in a man
+mysel’, though I never had it; it’s a good sign o’ him the night before.”
+
+Peter the post came clamping by-and-by along the street with his letters,
+calling loudly up the closes, less willing than usual to climb the long
+stairs, for he was in a hurry to reach the Dyces’.  Not the window for
+him this morning, nor had it been so for a week, since Kate no longer
+hung on the sashes, having lost all interest in the outer world.  He went
+tiptoe through the flagged close to the back-door and lightly tapped.
+
+“What way is she this morning?” said he, in the husky whisper that was
+the best he could control his voice to, and in his eagerness almost
+mastered his roving eye.
+
+“She’s got the turn!—she’s got the turn!” said the maid, transported.
+“Miss Dyce was down the now and told me that her temper was reduced.”
+
+“Lord help us!  I never knew she had one,” said the post.
+
+“It’s no’ temper that I mean,” said Kate, “but yon thing that you measure
+wi’ the weather-glass the doctor’s aye so cross wi’ that he shakes and
+shakes and shakes at it.  But anyway she’s better.  I hope Miss Ailie
+will come down for a bite; if not, she’ll starve hersel’”
+
+“That’s rare!  By George, that’s tip-top!” said the postman, so uplifted
+that he went off with the M.C. step he used at Masons’ balls, and would
+have clean forgotten to give Kate the letters if she had not cried him
+back.
+
+Wanton Wully sat on a barrow-tram waiting the postman’s exit.  “What way
+is she?” said he, and Peter’s errant eye cocked to all airts of the
+compass.  What he wanted was to keep this tit-bit to himself, to have the
+satisfaction of passing it along with his letters.  To give it to Wanton
+Wully at this stage would be to throw away good fortune.  It was said by
+Daniel Dyce that the only way to keep a dead secret in the burgh was to
+send Wully and his handbell round the town with it as public crier.  When
+Wanton Wully cried, it beat you to understand a word he said after
+“Notice!” but unofficially he was marvellously gleg at circulating news.
+“What way is she?” he asked again, seeing the postman’s hesitation.
+
+“If ye’ll promise to stick to the head o’ the toun and let me alone in
+the ither end, I’ll tell ye,” said Peter, and it was so agreed.
+
+But they had not long all the glory of the good tidings to themselves.
+Dr Brash came out of Dyce’s house for the first time in two days, very
+sunken in the eyes and sorely needing shaving, and it could be noticed by
+the dullest that he had his jaunty walk and a flower in the lapel of his
+badly-crushed coat.  Ailie put it there with trembling fingers; she could
+have kissed the man besides, if there had not been the chance that he
+might think her only another silly woman.  Later Footles hurled himself
+in fury from the doorway, his master close behind him.  At the sight of
+Mr Dyce the street was happy; it was the first time they had seen him for
+a week.  In burgh towns that are small enough we have this compensation,
+that if we have to grieve in common over many things, a good man’s
+personal joy exalts us all.
+
+“She’s better, Mr Dyce, I’m hearing,” said P. & A. MacGlashan, wiping his
+hands on his apron, to prepare for a fervent clasp from one who, he ought
+to have known, was not of the fervent-clasping kind.
+
+“Thank God!  Thank God!” said Mr Dyce.  “You would know she was pretty
+far through?”
+
+“Well—we kind of jaloused.  But we kent there was no danger—the thing
+would be ridiculous!” said P. & A. MacGlashan, and went into his shop in
+a hurry, much uplifted too, and picked out a big bunch of black grapes
+and sent his boy with them, with his compliments, to Miss Lennox Dyce,
+care of Daniel Dyce, Esquire, Writer.
+
+Miss Minto so adored the man she could not show herself to him in an hour
+like that; for she knew that she must weep, and a face begrutten ill
+became her, so in she came from the door of her Emporium and watched him
+pass the window.  She saw in him what she had never seen before—for in
+his clothing he was always trim and tidy, quite perjink, as hereabouts we
+say: she saw, with the sharp eyes of a woman who looks at the man she
+would like to manage, that his hat was dusty and his boots not very
+brightly polished.  More than all the news that leaked that week from the
+Dyces’ dwelling it realised for her the state of things there.
+
+“Tcht! tcht! tcht!” she said to herself; “three of them yonder, and he’s
+quite neglected!”  She went into a back room, where gathered the stuff
+for her Great Annual Jumble Sales with ninepenny things at sevenpence
+ha’penny, and searched a drawer that sometimes had revealed tremendous
+joy to Lennox and other bairns who were privileged to see what they
+called “Miss Minto’s back.”  In the drawer there was a doll called Grace,
+a large, robust, and indestructible wooden child that had shared Miss
+Minto’s youth and found the years more kindly than she, since it got no
+wrinkles thinking on the cares of competition in the millinery and
+mantua-making trade, but dozed its days away upon feathers and silk and
+velvet swatches.  Grace was dressed like a queen—if queens are attired in
+gorgeous hand-stitched remnants; she had so long been part of Miss
+Minto’s life that the mantua-maker swithered in her first intention.  But
+she thought how happy Mr Dyce must be that day, and hurriedly packed the
+doll in a box and went round herself with it for Lennox Dyce.
+
+As she knocked lightly at the front door, the old kid glove came loose in
+her hand—an omen!  One glance up and down the street to see that no one
+noticed her, and then she slipped it in her pocket, with a guilty
+countenance.  She was not young, at least she was not in her ’teens, but
+young enough to do a thing like that for luck and her liking of Daniel
+Dyce.  Yet her courage failed her, and when Kate came to the door the
+first thing she handed to her was the glove.
+
+“It fell off,” she said.  “I hope it means that it’s no longer needed.
+And this is a little thing for Miss Lennox, Kate; you will give her it
+with my compliments.  I hear there’s an improvement?”
+
+“You wouldna _believe_ it!” said Kate.  “Thank God, she’ll soon be
+carrying-on as bad as ever!”
+
+Mr Dyce would not have cared a rap that morning if he had come upon his
+clerks at Catch-the-Ten, or even playing leapfrog on their desks.  He was
+humming a psalm you may guess at as he looked at the documents heaped on
+his table—his calf-bound books and the dark japanned deed-boxes round his
+room.
+
+“Everything just the same, and business still going on!” he said to his
+clerk.  “Dear me! dear me! what a desperate world!  Do you know, I had
+the notion that everything was stopped.  No, when I think of it I oftener
+fancied all this was a dream.”
+
+“Not Menzies _v._ Kilblane at any rate,” said the clerk, with his hand on
+a bulky Process, for he was a cheery soul and knew the mind of Daniel
+Dyce.
+
+“I daresay not,” said the lawyer.  “That plea will last a while, I’m
+thinking.  And all about a five-pound fence!  Let you and me, Alexander,
+thank our stars there are no sick bairns in the house of either Menzies
+or Kilblane, for then they would understand how much their silly fence
+mattered, and pity be on our canty wee Table-of-Fees!”  He tossed over
+the papers with an impatient hand.  “Trash!” said he.  “What frightful
+trash!  I can’t be bothered with them—not to-day.  They’re no more to me
+than a docken leaf.  And last week they were almost everything.  You’ll
+have heard the child has got the turn?”
+
+“I should think I did!” said Alexander.  “And no one better pleased to
+hear it!”
+
+“Thank you, Alick.  How’s the family?”
+
+“Fine,” said the clerk.
+
+“Let me think, now—seven, isn’t it?  A big responsibility.”
+
+“Not so bad as long’s we have the health,” said Alexander.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mr Dyce.  “All one wants in this world is the health—and
+a little more money.  I was just thinking—”  He stopped himself, hummed a
+bar of melody, and twinkled through his spectacles.  “You’ll have read
+Dickens?” said he.
+
+“I was familiar with his works when I was young,” said Alexander, like a
+man confessing that in youth he played at bools.  “They were not bad.”
+
+“Just so!  Well, do you know there was an idea came to my mind just now
+that’s too clearly the consequence of reading Dickens for a week back, so
+I’ll hold my hand and keep my project for another early occasion when it
+won’t be Dickens that’s dictating.”
+
+He went early back that day, to relieve Ailie at her nursing, as he
+pretended to himself, but really for his own delight in looking at the
+life in eyes where yesterday was a cloud.  A new, fresh, wholesome air
+seemed to fill the house.  Bud lay on high pillows, with Miss Minto’s
+Grace propped against her knees, and the garret was full of the odour of
+flowers that had come in a glorious bunch from the banker’s garden.  Bell
+had grown miraculously young again, and from between Ailie’s eyebrows had
+disappeared the two black lines that had come there when Dr Brash had
+dropped in her ear the dreadful word pneumonia.  But Dr Brash had beaten
+it!  Oh, if she only knew the way to knit a winter waistcoat for him!
+
+The child put out her hand to her uncle, and he kissed her on the palm,
+frightful even yet of putting a lip to her cheek, lest he should
+experience again the terror of the hot breath from that consuming inward
+fire.
+
+“Well,” said he briskly, “how’s our health, your ladyship?  Losh bless
+me! what a fine, big, sonsy baby you have gotten here; poor Alibel’s nose
+will be out of joint, I’m thinking.”
+
+“Hasn’t got any,” said Bud, still weakly, in her new, thin, and
+unpractised voice, as she turned with a look that showed no lessening
+affection for the old doll, badly battered in the visage and wanting in
+the limbs, which lay beside her on the pillow.
+
+“Blythmeat and breadberry,” said Daniel Dyce.  “In the house of Daniel
+Dyce!  Bell and Ailie, here’s an example for you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+FOLLOWING on stormy weeks had come an Indian summer, when the world was
+blessed with Ailie’s idea of Arden weather, that keeps one wood for ever
+green and glad with company, knows only the rumour of distant ice and
+rain, and makes men, reading thereof by winter fires, smell fir and feel
+the breeze on their naked necks and hunger for the old abandoned bed
+among the brackens.  “It is better to hear the lark sing than the mouse
+squeak,” was the motto of Daniel Dyce, and though the larks were absent,
+he would have the little one in the garden long hours of the day.  She
+beiked there like a kitten in the sunlight till her wan cheek bloomed.
+The robin sang among the apples—pensive a bit for the ear of age, that
+knows the difference between the voice of spring and autumn—sweet enough
+for youth that happily does not have an ear for its gallant melancholy;
+the starlings blew like a dust about the sky; over the garden wall—the
+only one in the town that wanted broken bottles—far-off hills raised up
+their heads to keek at the little lassie, who saw from this that the
+world was big and glorious as ever.
+
+“My! ain’t this fine and clean?” said Bud.  “Feels as if Aunt Bell had
+been up this morning bright and early with a duster.”  She was enraptured
+with the blaze of the nasturtiums, that Bell would aye declare should be
+the flower of Scotland, for “Indian cress here, or Indian cress there,”
+as she would say, “they’re more like Scots than any flower I ken.  The
+poorer the soil the better they thrive, and they come to gold where all
+your fancy flowers would rot for the want of nutriment.  Nutriment! give
+them that in plenty and you’ll see a bonny display of green and no’ much
+blossom.  The thing’s a parable—the worst you can do with a Scotsman, if
+you want the best from him, ’s to feed him ower rich.  Look at Captain
+Consequence; never the same since he was aboard—mulligatawny even-on in
+India; a score of servant-men, and never a hand’s-turn for himself,—all
+the blossom from that kind of Indian cress is on his nose.”
+
+“Lands sake!  I _am_ glad I’m not dead,” said Bud, with all her body
+tingling as she heard the bees buzz in the nasturtium bells and watched
+the droll dog Footles snap at the butterflies.
+
+“It’s not a bad world, one way and the other,” said Miss Bell, knitting
+at her side; “it would have been a hantle worse if we had had the making
+o’t.  But here we have no continuing city, and yonder—if the Lord had
+willed—you would have gone sweeping through the gates of the new
+Jerusalem.”
+
+“Sweeping!” said the child.  “I can’t sweep for keeps; Kate won’t give me
+a chance to learn.  But anyhow I guess this is a good enough world for a
+miserable sinner like me.”
+
+Mr Dyce, who had carried her, chair and all, into the garden, though she
+could have walked there, chuckled at this confession.
+
+“Dan,” said Bell, “think shame of yourself!  You make the child
+light-minded.”
+
+“The last thing I would look for in women is consistency,” said he, “and
+I daresay that’s the way I like them.  What is it Ailie quotes from
+Emerson?  ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’—that
+kind of goblin never scared a woman in the dark yet.  But surely you’ll
+let me laugh when I think of you chiding her gladness in life to-day,
+when I mind of you last week so desperate throng among the poultices.”
+
+“I’m for none of your lawyer arguments,” said Bell, trying in vain to gag
+herself with a knitting-pin from one of the Shetland shawls she had been
+turning out for years with the hope that some day she could keep one for
+herself.  “It might have been that ‘she pleased God and was beloved of
+Him, so that, living among sinners’—among sinners, Dan,—‘she was
+translated.  Yea, speedily was she taken away, lest that wickedness
+should alter her understanding, or deceit beguile her soul.’”
+
+“I declare if I haven’t forgot my peppermints!” said her brother,
+quizzing her, and clapping his outside pockets.  “A consoling text!  I
+have no doubt at all you could prelect upon it most acceptably, but
+confess that you are just as glad as me that there’s the like of Dr
+Brash.”
+
+“I like the Doc,” the child broke in, with most of this dispute beyond
+her; “he’s a real cuddley man.  Every time he rapped at my chest I wanted
+to cry ‘Come in.’  Say, isn’t he slick with a poultice!”
+
+“He was slick enough to save your life, my dear,” said Uncle Dan soberly.
+“I’m almost jealous of him now, for Bud’s more his than mine.”
+
+“Did he make me better?” asked the child.
+
+“Under God.  I’m thinking we would have been in a bonny habble wanting
+him.”
+
+“I don’t know what a bonny habble is from Adam,” said Bud, “but I bet the
+Doc wasn’t _everything_: there was that prayer, you know.”
+
+“Eh?” exclaimed her uncle sharply.
+
+“Oh, I heard you, Uncle Dan,” said Bud, with a sly look up at him.  “I
+wasn’t sleeping really that night, and I was awful liable to have tickled
+you on the bald bit of your head.  I never saw it before.  I could have
+done it easily if it wasn’t that I was so tired; and my breath was so
+sticky that I had to keep on yanking it, just; and you were so solemn and
+used such dre’ffle big words.  I didn’t tickle you, but I thought I’d
+help you pray, and so I kept my eyes shut and said a bit myself.  Say, I
+want to tell you something,”—she stammered, with a shaking lip.  “I felt
+real mean when you talked about a sinless child; of course you didn’t
+know, but it was—it wasn’t true.  I know why I was taken ill: it was a
+punishment for telling fibs to Kate.  I was mighty frightened that I’d
+die before I had a chance to tell you.”
+
+“Fibs!” said Mr Dyce seriously.  “That’s bad.  And I’m loth to think it
+of you, for it’s the only sin that does not run in the family, and the
+one I most abominate.”
+
+Bell stopped her knitting, quite distressed, and the child lost her
+new-come bloom.  “I didn’t mean it for fibs,” she said, “and it wasn’t
+anything I said, but a thing I did when I was being Winifred Wallace.
+Kate wanted me to write a letter—”
+
+“Who to?” demanded Auntie Bell.
+
+“It was to—it was to—oh, I daren’t tell you,” said Bud, distressed.  “It
+wouldn’t be fair, and maybe she’ll tell you herself, if you ask her.
+Anyhow I wrote the letter for her, and seeing she wasn’t getting any
+answer to it, and was just looney for one, and I was mighty keen myself,
+I turned Winny on, and wrote one.  I went out and posted it that dre’ffle
+wet night you had the party, and I never let on to Kate, so she took it
+for a really really letter from the person we sent the other one to.  I
+got soaked going to the post-office, and that’s where I guess God began
+to play _His_ hand.  Jim said the Almighty held a royal flush every
+blessed time; but that’s card talk, I don’t know what it means, ’cept
+that Jim said it when the ‘Span of Life’ manager skipped with the
+boodle—lit out with the cash, I mean, and the company had to walk home
+from Kalamazoo on the railroad ties.”
+
+“Mercy on us!  I never heard a word of it,” cried Miss Bell.  “This’ll be
+a warning!  People that have bairns to manage shouldn’t be giving
+parties; it was the only night since ever you came here that we never put
+you to your bed.  Did Kate not change your clothes when you came in wet?”
+
+“She didn’t know I was out, for that would have spoiled everything,
+’cause she’d have asked me what I was doing out, and I’d have had to tell
+her, for I can’t fib that kind of fib.  When I came in all soaking, I
+took a teeny-weeny loan of Uncle’s tartan rug, and played to Kate I was
+Helen Macgregor, and Kate went into spasms, and didn’t notice anything
+till my clothes were dry.  Was it very very naughty of me?”
+
+“It was indeed!  It was worse than naughty, it was silly,” said her Uncle
+Dan, remembering all the prank had cost them.
+
+“Oh, Lennox! my poor sinful bairn!” said her aunt, most melancholy.
+
+“I didn’t mean the least harm,” protested the child, trembling on the
+verge of tears.  “I did it all to make Kate feel kind of gay, for I hate
+to see a body mope,—and I wanted a little fun myself,” she added hastily,
+determined to confess all.
+
+“I’ll Kate her, the wretch!” cried Auntie Bell quite furious, gathering
+up her knitting.
+
+“Why, Auntie Bell, it wasn’t her fault, it was—”
+
+But before she could say more, Miss Bell was flying to the house for an
+explanation, Footles barking at her heels astonished, for it was the
+first time he had seen her trot with a ball of wool trailing behind her.
+The maid had the kitchen window open to the last inch, and looked out on
+a street deserted but for a ring of bairns that played before the baker’s
+door.  Their voices, clear and sweet, and laden with no sense of care or
+apprehension, filled the afternoon with melody—
+
+   “Water, water wall-flowers,
+   Growing up so high,
+   We are all maidens,
+   And we must all die.”
+
+To the maid of Colonsay in an autumn mood, the rhyme conveyed some
+pensive sentiment that was pleasant though it almost made her cry: the
+air slipped to her heart, the words in some way found the Gaelic chord
+that shakes in sympathy with minor keys, for beautiful is all the world,
+our day of it so brief!  Even Miss Bell was calmed by the children’s song
+as it came from the sunny street into the low-ceiled shady kitchen.  She
+had played that game herself, sung these words long ago, never thinking
+of their meaning: how pitiful it was that words and a tune should so
+endure, unchanging, and all else alter!
+
+“Kate, Kate, you foolish lass!” she cried, and the maid drew in with the
+old astonishment and remorse, as if it was her first delinquency.
+
+“I—I was looking for the post,” said she.
+
+“Not for the first time, it seems,” said her mistress.  “I’m sorry to
+hear it was some business of yours that sent Miss Lennox to the
+post-office on a wet night that was the whole cause of our tribulation.
+At least you might have seen the wean was dried when she came back.”
+
+“I’m sure and I don’t know what you’re talking about, me’m,” said the
+maid, astounded.
+
+“You got a letter the day the bairn took ill; what was it about?”
+
+The girl burst into tears and covered her head with her apron.  “Oh, Miss
+Dyce, Miss Dyce!” she cried, “you’re that particular, and I’m ashamed to
+tell you.  It was only just diversion.”
+
+“Indeed, and you must tell me,” said her mistress, now determined.
+“There’s some mystery here that must be cleared, as I’m a living woman.
+Show me that letter this instant!”
+
+“I can’t, Miss Dyce, I can’t, I’m quite affronted.  You don’t ken who
+it’s from.”
+
+“I ken better than yourself; it’s from nobody but Lennox,” said Miss
+Bell.
+
+“My stars!” cried the maid, astonished.  “Do you tell me that?  Amn’t I
+the stupid one?  I thought it was from Charles.  Oh, me’m! what will
+Charles Maclean of Oronsay think of me?  He’ll think I was demented,” and
+turning to her servant’s chest she threw it open and produced the second
+sham epistle.
+
+Miss Bell went in with it to Ailie in the parlour, and they read it
+together.  Ailie laughed till the tears came at the story it revealed.
+“It’s more creditable to her imagination than to my teaching in grammar
+and spelling,” was her only criticism.  “The—the little rogue!”
+
+“And is that the way you look at it?” asked Bell, disgusted.  “A pack of
+lies from end to end.  She should be punished for it; at least she should
+be warned that it was very wicked.”
+
+“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Ailie.  “I think she has been punished
+enough already, if punishment was in it.  Just fancy if the Lord could
+make so much ado about a little thing like that!  It’s not a pack of lies
+at all, Bell; it’s literature, it’s romance.”
+
+“Well, romancing!” said Miss Bell.  “What’s romancing, if you leave out
+Walter Scott?  I am glad she has a conviction of the sin of it herself.
+If she had slipped away from us on Wednesday this letter would have been
+upon her soul.  It’s vexing her now.”
+
+“If that is so, it’s time her mind was relieved,” said Ailie, and rising,
+sped to the garden with the letter in her hand.  Her heart bled to see
+the apprehension on Bud’s face, and beside her, Dan, stroking her hair
+and altogether bewildered.
+
+“Bud,” cried Ailie, kissing her, “do you think you could invent a lover
+for me who would write me letters half so interesting as this?  It’s a
+lover like that I have all the time been waiting for: the ordinary kind,
+by all my reading, must be very dull in their correspondence, and the
+lives they lead deplorably humdrum—
+
+   “‘Oh, Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling;
+      Oh, Charlie is my darling, the young marineer.’
+
+After this I’ll encourage only sailors: Bud, dear, get me a nice clean
+sailor.  But I stipulate that he must be more discriminating with his
+capitals, and know that the verb must agree with its nominative, and not
+be quite so much confused in his geography.”
+
+“You’re not angry with me, Aunt?” said Bud, in a tone of great relief,
+with the bloom coming back.  “Was it very, very wicked?”
+
+“Pooh!” said Ailie.  “If that’s wicked, where’s our Mr Shakespeare?  Oh,
+child! child! you are my own heart’s treasure.  I thought a girl called
+Alison I used to know long ago was long since dead and done with, and
+here she’s to the fore yet, daft as ever, and her name is Lennox Dyce.”
+
+“No, it wasn’t Lennox wrote that letter,” said Bud; “it was Winifred
+Wallace, and oh, my! she’s a pretty tough proposition.  You’re quite,
+_quite_ sure it wasn’t fibbing.”
+
+“No more than Cinderella’s fibbing,” said her aunt, and flourished the
+letter in the face of Dan, who she saw was going to enter some dissent.
+“Behold, Dan Dyce, the artist b-r-r-rain!  Calls sailor sweethearts from
+the vasty deep, and they come obedient to her bidding.  Spise and perils,
+Dan, and the golden horn a trifle out of its latitude, and the darling
+boy that’s _always_ being drove from home.  One thing you overlooked in
+the boy, Bud—the hectic flush.  I’m sure Kate would have liked a touch of
+the hectic flush in him.”
+
+But Bud was still contrite, thinking of the servant.  “She was so set
+upon a letter from her Charles,” she explained, “and now she’ll have to
+know that I was joshing her.  Perhaps I shouldn’t say joshing, Auntie
+Ailie,—I s’pose it’s slang.”
+
+“It is,” said her aunt, “and most unladylike; let us call it pulling her
+le—let us call it—oh, the English language!  I’ll explain it all to Kate,
+and that will be the end of it.”
+
+“Kate ’d be dre’ffle rattled to talk about love to a grown-up lady,” said
+Bud, on thinking.  “I’d best go in and explain it all myself.”
+
+“Very well,” said Auntie Ailie; so Bud went into the house and through
+the lobby to the kitchen.
+
+“I’ve come to beg your pardon, Kate,” said she hurriedly.  “I’m sorry
+I—I—pulled your leg about that letter you thought was from Charles.”
+
+“Toots!  Ye needn’t bother about my leg or the letter either,” said Kate,
+most cheerfully, with another letter open in her hand, and Mr Dyce’s
+evening mail piled on the table before her; “letters are like herring
+now, they’re comin’ in in shoals.  I might have kent yon one never came
+from Oronsay, for it hadn’t the smell of peats.  I have a real one now
+that’s new come in from Charles, and it’s just a beauty!  He got his leg
+broken on the boats a month ago, and Dr Macphee’s attending him.  Oh, I’m
+that glad to think that Charles’s leg is in the hands of a kent face!”
+
+“Why! that’s funny,” said Bud.  “And we were just going to write—oh, you
+mean the other Charles?”
+
+“I mean Charles Maclean,” said Kate, with some confusion.  “I—I—was only
+lettin’-on about the other Charles; he was only a diversion.”
+
+“But you sent him a letter?” cried Bud.
+
+“Not me!” said Kate composedly.  “I kept it, and I sent it on to Charles
+out in Oronsay when you were poorly; it did fine!  He says he’s glad to
+hear about my education, and doesn’t think much of gentlemen that dances,
+but that he’s always glad to get the scrape of a pen from me,
+because—because—well, just because he loves me still the same, yours
+respectfully, Charles Maclean.  And oh, my stars, look at what a lot of
+crosses!”
+
+Bud scrutinised them with amazement.  “Well, _he’s_ a pansy!” said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+SUDDENLY all the town began to talk of the pride of Kate MacNeill.  She
+took to wearing all her best on week-days; abandoned the kitchen window,
+and ruined an old-established trade in pay-night sweeties, that used to
+shower on her in threepenny packets at the start of every autumn when the
+days grew short.  No longer blate young lads scraped with their feet
+uneasily in the sawdust of P. & A MacGlashan’s, swithering between the
+genteel attractions of Turkish Delight and the eloquence of conversation
+lozenges, that saved a lot of thinking, and made the blatest equal with
+the boldest when it came to tender badinage below the lamp at the
+back-door close with Dyce’s maid.  Talk about the repartee of salons! wit
+moves deliberately there compared with the swift giff-gaff that Kate and
+her lads were used to maintain with sentiments doubly sweet and
+ready-made at threepence the quarter-pound.  So fast the sweeties passed,
+like the thrust and riposte of rapiers, that their final purpose was
+forgotten; they were sweeties no longer to be eaten, but scented
+billets-doux, laconic of course, but otherwise just as satisfactory as
+those that high-born maidens get only one at a time and at long intervals
+when their papas are out at business.
+
+  “Are you engaged?”
+
+     “Just keep spierin’.”
+
+  “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
+
+     “You are a gay deceiver.”
+
+  “My heart is yours.”
+
+     “How are your poor feet?”
+
+By the hour could Kate sustain such sparkling flirtations, or at least
+till a “Kiss me, dearest” turned up from the bottom of the poke, and then
+she slapped his face for him.  It is the only answer out in Colonsay
+unless he’s your intended.
+
+But it stopped all at once.  P. & A. was beat to understand what way his
+pay-night drawings fell, until he saw that all the lads were taking the
+other side of the street.  “That’s _her_ off, anyway!” said he to Mrs P.
+& A., with a gloomy visage.  “I wonder who’s the lucky man?  It’s maybe
+Peter,—she’ll no’ get mony losengers from him.”
+
+And it was not only the decline in votive offerings that showed the vital
+change; she was not at the Masons’ ball, which shows how wrong was the
+thought of P. & A., for Peter was there with another lady.  Very cheery,
+too; exceedingly cheery, ah, desperately gay, but quite beyond the
+comprehension of his partner, Jenny Shand, who was unable to fathom why a
+spirit so merry in the hall should turn to groans and bitterness when,
+feeling a faintish turn, she got him in behind the draft-screen on the
+landing of the stair to sit the “Flowers o’ Edinburgh.”  He was fidging
+fain to tell her plainly what he thought of all her sex, but strove like
+a perfect gentleman against the inclination, and only said “Ha! ha! do
+you say so, noo?” and “Weemen!” with a voice that made them all out
+nothing more nor less than vipers.  Poor Jenny Shand! bonny Jenny Shand!
+what a shame she should be bothered with so ill-faured a fellow!  When
+she was picking bits of nothing off his coat lapel, as if he was her
+married man, and then coming to herself with a pretty start and begging
+pardon for her liberty, the diffy paid no heed; his mind was down the
+town, and he was seeing himself yesterday morning at the first delivery
+getting the window of Dyce’s kitchen banged in his face when he started
+to talk about soap, meaning to work the topic round to hands and gloves.
+He had got the length of dirty hands, and asked the size of hers, when
+bang! the window went, and the Hielan’ one in among her pots and pans.
+
+It was not any wonder, for other lads as deliberate and gawky as himself
+had bothered her all the week with the same demand.  Hands! hands! you
+would think, said she, they were all at the door wi’ a bunch of
+finger-rings bound to marry her right or wrong, even if they had to put
+them on her nose.  Of course she knew finely what they were after—she
+knew that each blate wooer wanted a partner for the ball, and could only
+clench the compact with a pair of gloves; but just at present she was not
+in trim for balls, and landsmen had no interest for her since her heart
+was on the brine.  Some of them boldly guessed at seven-and-a-halfs
+without inquiry, and were dumfoundered that she would not look at them;
+and one had acquired a pair of roomy white cotton ones with elastic round
+the top—a kind of glove that plays a solemn part at burials, having come
+upon Miss Minto when her stock of festive kids was done.  They waylaid
+Kate coming with her basket from the mangle—no, thanky, she was needing
+no assistance; or she would find them scratching at the window after
+dark; or hear them whistling, whistling, whistling—oh, so softly!—in the
+close.  There are women rich and nobly born who think that they are
+fortunate, and yet, poor dears! they never heard the whistling in the
+close.  Kate’s case was terrible!  By day, in her walks abroad in her new
+merino, not standing so much as a wink, or paying any heed to a “Hey,
+Kate, what’s your hurry?” she would blast them with a flashing eye.  By
+night, hearing their signals, she showed them what she thought of them by
+putting to the shutters.  “Dir-r-rt!” was what she called them, with her
+nose held high and every “r” a rattle on the lug for them—this to Bud,
+who could not understand the new distaste Kate had to the other sex.
+“Just dirt below my feet!  I think myself far far above them.”
+
+One evening Mr Dyce came in from his office and quizzed her in the lobby.
+“Kate,” said he, “I’m not complaining, but I wish you would have mercy on
+my back-door.  There’s not a night I have come home of late but if I look
+up the close I find a lad or two trying to bite his way into you through
+the door.  Can you no’ go out, like a good lass, and talk at them in the
+Gaelic—it would serve them right!  If you don’t, steps will have to be
+taken with a strong hand, as you say yourself.  What are they wanting?
+Bless my soul! can this—can this be love?”
+
+She ran to the sanctuary of the kitchen, plumped in a chair, and was
+swept away in a storm of laughter and tears that frightened Bud, who
+waited there a return of her aunts from the Women’s Guild.  “Why, Kate,
+what’s the matter?” she asked.
+
+“Your un—your un—un—uncle’s blaming me for harbouring all them chaps
+about the door, and says it’s l-l—love: oh dear! I’m black affronted.”
+
+“You needn’t go into hysterics about a little thing like that,” said Bud;
+“Uncle Dan’s tickled to death to see so many beaux you have, wanting you
+to that ball; he said last night he had to walk between so many of them
+waiting for you there in front, it was like shassaying up the middle in
+the Haymakers.”
+
+“It’s not hysterics, nor hersterics either,” said the maid; “and oh, I
+wish I was out of here and back in the isle of Colonsay!”
+
+Yes, Colonsay became a great place then.  America, where the prospects
+for domestics used to be so fascinating, had lost its glamour since Bud
+had told her the servants there were as discontented as in Scotland, and
+now her native isle beat Paradise.  She would talk by the hour, at a
+washing, of its charms, of which the greatest seemed to be the absence of
+public lamps and the way you heard the wind!  Colonsay seemed to be a
+place where folk were always happy, meeting in each other’s houses,
+dancing, singing, courting, marrying, getting money every now and then
+from sons or wealthy cousins in Australia.  Bud wondered if they never
+did any work in Colonsay.  Yes, yes, indeed! Kate could assure her, they
+worked quite often out in Colonsay—in the winter time.
+
+But one thing greatly troubled her—she must write back at once to the
+only Charles, who so marvellously had come to her through Bud’s
+unconscious offices, and she knew she could never sustain the standard of
+hand-write, spelling, and information Bud had established in her first
+epistle.  Her position was lamentable.  It was all very well to be the
+haughty madam on the street, and show herself a wise-like modest gyurl,
+but what was that without the education?  C. Maclean was a man of
+education—he got it on the yats among the gentry, he had travelled all
+the world!
+
+Kate’s new airs, that caused such speculation in the town, were—now let
+me tell you—all the result of a dash at education.  She wanted to be able
+to write a letter as good as Bud in a week or two, and had engaged the
+child to tutor her.
+
+Bud never found a more delicious game in all her life, and it hurried her
+convalescence, for to play it properly she must be Aunt Ailie, and Aunt
+Ailie was always so strong and well.
+
+“Education,” said Bud, who had a marvellous memory, and was now, you will
+notice, Ailie Dyce, sitting on a high chair, with the maid on a stool
+before her,—“education is not what a lot of sillies think it is; it isn’t
+knowing everything.  Lots try for it that way, and if they don’t die
+young, just when they’re going to win the bursary, they grow up horrid
+bores, that nobody asks to picnics.  You can’t know everything, not if
+you sit up cramming till the cows come home; and if you want to see a
+brainy person jump, ask him how his mother raised her dough.  Miss
+Katherine MacNeill, never—NEVER—NEVER be ashamed of not knowing a thing,
+but always be ashamed of not wanting to know.  That’s Part One.  Don’t
+you think you should have an exercise-book, child, and take it down?”
+
+“Toots! what’s my head for?” said the servant
+
+“Uncle Dan says education is knowing what you don’t know, and knowing
+where to find it out without the other people knowing; but he says in
+most places you can get the name of having it fine and good by talking
+loud and pushing all your goods in front of you in a big enough barrow.
+And Auntie Bell—she says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and
+the rest of it is what she skipped at Barbara Mushet’s Seminary.  But I
+tell you, child (said the echo of Ailie Dyce), that education’s just
+another name for love.”
+
+“My stars!  I never knew that before,” cried the servant; “I’m awful glad
+about Charles!”
+
+“It isn’t that kind of love,” Bud hurriedly explained, “though it’s good
+enough, for that’s too easy.  You’re only on the trail for education when
+you love things so you’ve simply _got_ to learn as much as is good for
+your health about them.  Everything’s sweet—oh, so sweet—all the
+different countries, and the different people, when you understand, and
+the woods, and the things in them, and all the animals,—’cepting maybe
+puddocks, though it’s likely God made them too when He was kind of
+careless,—and the stars, and the things men did, and women,—’specially
+those that’s dead, poor dears!—and all the books, ’cepting the stupid
+ones Aunt Ailie simply _can’t_ stand, though she never lets on to the
+ladies who like that kind.”
+
+“My Lord! must you love them all?” asked the maid, astonished.
+
+“Yes, you must, my Lord,” said Bud.  “You’ll never know the least thing
+well in this world unless you love it.  It’s sometimes mighty hard, I
+allow.  I hated the multiplication table, but now I love it—at least, I
+kind of love it up to seven times nine, and then it’s almost horrid, but
+not so horrid as it was before I knew that I would never have got to this
+place from Chicago unless a lot of men had learned the table up as far as
+twelve times twelve.”
+
+“I’m not particular about the multiplication table,” said the maid, “but
+I want to be truly refined, the same as you said in yon letter to
+Charles.  I know he’ll be expecting it.”
+
+“H-m-m-m-m!” said Bud thoughtfully, “I s’pose I’ll have to ask Auntie
+Ailie about that, for I declare to goodness I don’t know where you get
+it, for it’s not in any of the books I’ve seen.  She says it’s the One
+Thing in a lady, and it grows inside you someway, like—like—like your
+lungs, I guess.  It’s no use trying to stick it on outside with lessons
+on the piano or the mandoline, and parlour talk about poetry, and
+speaking mim as if you had a clothes-pin in your mouth, and couldn’t say
+the least wee thing funny without it was a bit you’d see in ‘Life and
+Work.’  Refinement, some folk think, is not laughing right out.”
+
+“My stars!” said Kate.
+
+“And Auntie Bell says a lot think it’s not knowing any Scotch language
+and pretending you never took a tousy tea.”
+
+“I think,” said Kate, “we’ll never mind refining; it’s an awful bother.”
+
+“But every lady must be refined,” said Bud.  “Ailie prosists in that.”
+
+“I don’t care,” said the maid; “I’m not particular about being very much
+of a lady,—I’ll maybe never have the jewellery for it,—but I would like
+to be a sort of lady on the Sundays, when Charles is at home.  I’m not
+hurryin’ you, my dear, but—but when do we start the writin’?” and she
+yawned in a way that said little for the interest of Professor Bud’s
+opening lecture.
+
+Whereupon Bud explained that in a systematic course of education reading
+came first, and the best reading was Shakespeare, who was truly ennobling
+to the human mind.  She brought in Auntie Ailie’s Shakespeare, and sat
+upon the fender, and plunged Kate at once into some queer society at
+Elsinore.  But, bless you! nothing came of it: Kate fell asleep, and woke
+to find the fire cold and the child entranced with Hamlet.
+
+“Oh dear! it’s a slow job getting your education,” she said pitifully,
+“and all this time there’s my dear Charles waiting for a letter!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+“I CANNA be bothered with that Shakespeare,” Kate cried hopelessly, after
+many days of him; “the man’s a mournin’ thing!  Could he not give us
+something cheery, with ‘Come, all ye boys!’ in it, the same as the
+trawlers sing in Colonsay?  There was far more fun last week in the penny
+Horner.”
+
+So Bud dipped in the bottomless well of knowledge again and scooped up
+Palgrave’s ‘Golden Treasury,’ and splashed her favourite lyrics at the
+servant’s feet.  Kate could not stand the ‘Golden Treasury’ either; the
+songs were nearly all so lamentable they would make a body greet.  Bud
+assured her on the best authority that the sweetest songs were those that
+told of saddest thought, but Kate said that might be right enough for
+gentry who had no real troubles of their own, but they weren’t the thing
+at all for working folk.  What working folk required were songs with
+tunes to them, and choruses that you could tramp time to with your feet.
+History, too, was as little to her taste; it was all incredible,—the
+country could never have kept up so many kings and queens.  But she liked
+geography, for the map enabled her to keep an eye on Charles as he went
+from port to port, where letters in her name, but still the work of
+Lennox, would be waiting for him.
+
+The scheme of education was maintained so long because the town had come
+upon its melancholy days and Bud began to feel depression, so that
+playing teacher was her only joy.  The strangers had gone south with the
+swallows; the steamer no longer called each day to make the pavement
+noisy in the afternoon with the skliff of city feet, so different from
+the customary tread of tackety boots; the coachman’s horn, departing, no
+longer sounded down the valley like a brassy challenge from the wide,
+wide world.  Peace came to the burgh like a swoon, and all its days were
+pensive.  Folk went about their tasks reluctant, the very smoke of the
+chimneys loitered lazily round the ridges where the starlings chattered,
+and a haze was almost ever over the hills.  When it rose, sometimes, Bud,
+from her attic window, could see the road that wound through the distant
+glen.  The road!—the road!—ah, that began to have a meaning and a kind of
+cry, and wishfully she looked at it and thought upon its other end, where
+the life she had left and read about was loudly humming and marvellous
+things were being done.  Charles Maclean of Oronsay, second mate, whom
+she loved unto destruction, now that he was writing regularly, fairly
+daft himself to get such charming curious letters as he thought from
+Kate, had been adjusted by the doctor, and was once again on the heaving
+main.  It would be Cardiff or Fleetwood, Hamburg, Santander, or Bilbao,
+whose very name is like a story, and his tarry pen, infected by the
+child’s example, induced to emulation, always bravely sought to give some
+picture of the varied world through which he wandered.  Of noisy ports
+did he communicate, crowded with ships, of streets and lofty warehouses,
+and places where men sang, and sometimes of the playhouse, where the
+villain was a bad one and the women were so braw.
+
+“What is braw?” asked Bud.
+
+“It’s fine clothes,” said Kate; “but what’s fine clothes if you are not
+pure in heart and have a figure?” and she surveyed with satisfaction her
+own plump arms.
+
+But the child guessed at a wider meaning for the word as Charles used it,
+and thought upon the beauteous clever women of the plays that she had
+seen herself in far Chicago, and since her vicarious lover would have
+thought them braw and plainly interesting, she longed to emulate them, at
+least to see them again.  And, oh! to see the places that he wrote of,
+and hear the thundering wheels and jangling bells!  And there was also
+Auntie Ailie’s constant stimulus to thoughts and aspirations that could
+meet no satisfaction in this little town.  Bell dwelt continually within
+the narrow walls of her immediate duty, content, like many, thank the
+Lord! doing her daily turns as best she could, dreaming of nothing
+nobler.  Dan had ranged wider in his time, and knew the world a great
+deal better, and had seen so much of it was illusion, its prizes
+“Will-o’-the-wisp,” that now his wild geese were come home.  He could see
+the world in the looking-glass in which he shaved, and there was much to
+be amused at.  But Ailie’s geese were still flying far across the
+firmament, knowing no place of rest.  The child had bewitched her! it was
+often the distant view for her now, the region unattainable; and though
+apparently she had long ago surrendered to her circumstances, she now
+would sometimes silently irk at her prisoning here, in sleep-town, where
+we let things slide until to-morrow, while the wild birds of her
+inclination flew around the habitable wakeful world.  Unwittingly—no, not
+unwittingly always—she charged the child with curiosity unsatisfiable,
+and secret discontent at little things and narrow, with longings for
+spacious arenas and ecstatic crowded hours.  To be clever, to be brave
+and daring, to venture and make a glorious name!—how her face would glow
+and all her flesh would quiver picturing lives she would have liked to
+live if only she had had the chance!  How many women are like that!
+silent by the hearth, seemingly placid and content as they darn and mend
+and wait on the whim and call of dullards.
+
+Bell might be content and busy with small affairs, but she had a quick,
+shrewd eye, and saw the child’s unrest.  It brought her real distress,
+for so had the roving spirit started in her brother William.  Sometimes
+she softly scolded Lennox, and even had contemplated turning her into
+some other room from the attic that had the only window in the house from
+which the highroad could be seen, but Ailie told her that would be to
+make the road more interesting for the child.  “And I don’t know,” she
+added, “that it should worry us if she does indulge herself in dreams
+about the great big world and its possibilities.  I suppose she’ll have
+to take the road some day.”
+
+“Take the road!” cried Bell, almost weeping.  “Are you daft, Ailie Dyce?
+What need she take the road for?  There’s plenty to do here, and I’m sure
+she’ll never be better off anywhere else.  A lot of nonsense!  I hope you
+are not putting notions in her head; we had plenty of trouble with her
+father.”
+
+“It would break my heart to lose her, I assure you,” said Aunt Ailie
+softly; “but—” and she ended with a sigh.
+
+“I’m sure you’re content enough yourself?” said Bell; “and you’re not by
+any means a diffy.”
+
+“Indeed I am content,” admitted Ailie; “at least—at least I’m not
+complaining.  But there is a discontent that’s almost holy, a roving mood
+that’s the salvation of the race.  There were, you mind, the Pilgrim
+Fathers—”
+
+“I wish to the Lord they had bided at home!” cried Bell.  “There’s never
+been happy homes in this Christian land since they started emigration.”
+And at that Miss Ailie smiled and Dan began to chuckle.
+
+“Does it not occur to you, Bell,” said he, “that but for the Pilgrim
+Fathers there would never have been Bud?”
+
+“I declare neither there would!” she said, smiling.  “Perhaps it was as
+well they went, poor things!  And, of course, there must be many an
+honest decent body in America.”
+
+“Quite a number!” said Ailie.  “You would not expect this burgh to hold
+them all, or even Scotland: America’s glad to get the overflow.”
+
+“Ah, you’re trying to make me laugh, the pair of you, and forget my
+argument,” said Bell; “but I’ll not be carried away this time.  I’m
+feared for the bairn, and that’s telling you.  Oh, Ailie, mind what her
+mother was—poor girl! poor dear girl! playacting for her living, roving
+from place to place, with nothing you could call a home; laughing and
+greeting and posturing before lights for the diversion of the world—”
+
+“We might do worse than give the world diversion,” said Ailie soberly.
+
+“Yes, yes; but with a painted face and all a vain profession—that is
+different, is it not?  I love a jovial heart like Dan’s, but to make the
+body just a kind of fiddle!  It’s only in the body we can be ourselves—it
+is our only home; think of furnishing it with shams, and lighting every
+room that should be private, and leaving up the blinds that the world may
+look in at a penny a-head!  How often have I thought of William, weeping
+for a living, as he had to do sometimes, no doubt, and wondered what was
+left for him to do to ease his grief when Mary died.  Oh, curb the child,
+Ailie! curb the dear wee lassie,—it’s you it all depends on; she worships
+you; the making of her ’s in your hands.  Keep her humble.  Keep her from
+thinking of worldly glories.  Teach her to number her days, that she may
+apply her heart unto wisdom.  Her mind’s too often out of here and
+wandering elsewhere: it was so with William,—it was once the same with
+you.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Indeed it was no wonder that Bud’s mind should wander elsewhere, since
+the life about her had grown so suddenly dull.  In these days Wanton
+Wully often let his morning sleep too long possess him, and hurrying
+through the deserted dawn with his breeches scarcely on, would ring the
+bell in a hasty fury half an hour behind the proper time.  But a little
+lateness did not matter in a town that really never woke.  Men went to
+work in what we call a dover—that is, half asleep; shopkeepers came
+blinking drowsily down and took their shutters off, and went back to
+breakfast, or, I fear sometimes, to bed, and when the day was aired and
+decency demanded that they should make some pretence at business, they
+stood by the hour at their shop doors looking at the sparrows, wagtails,
+and blue-bonnets pecking in the street, or at the gulls that quarrelled
+in the syver sand.  Nothing doing.  Two or three times a-day a cart from
+the country rumbled down the town, breaking the Sabbath calm; and on one
+memorable afternoon there came a dark Italian with an organ who must have
+thought that this at last was Eldorado, so great was his reward from a
+community sick of looking at each other.  But otherwise nothing doing,
+not a thing!  As in the dark of the fabled underland the men who are
+blind are kings, George Jordon, the silly man, who never had a purpose,
+and carried about with him an enviable eternal dream, seemed in that
+listless world the only wide-awake, for he at least kept moving,
+slouching somewhere, sure there was work for him to do if only he could
+get at it.  Bairns dawdled to the schools, dogs slept in the track where
+once was summer traffic; Kate, melancholy, billowed from the kitchen
+window, and into the street quite shamelessly sang sad old Gaelic songs
+which Mr Dyce would say would have been excellent if only they were put
+to music, and her voice was like a lullaby.
+
+One day Bud saw great bands of countless birds depart, passing above the
+highroad, and standing in the withering garden heard as it were without a
+breath of wind the dry rattle of dead leaves fall.  It frightened her.
+She came quickly in to the tea-table, almost at her tears.
+
+“Oh, it’s dre’ffle,” she said.  “It’s Sunday all the time, without good
+clothes and the gigot of mutton for dinner.  I declare I want to yell.”
+
+“Dear me!” said Miss Bell cheerfully, “I was just thinking things were
+unusually lively for the time of year.  There’s something startling every
+other day.  Aggie Williams found her fine new kitchen-range too big for
+the accommodation, and she has covered it with cretonne and made it into
+a what-not for her parlour.  Then there’s the cantata—I hear the U.P.
+choir is going to start to practise it whenever Duncan Gill, next door to
+the hall, is gone: he’s near his end, poor body! they’re waiting on, but
+he says he could never die a Christian death if he had to listen to them
+at their operatics through the wall.”
+
+“It’s not a bit like this in Chicago,” said the child, and her uncle
+chuckled.
+
+“I daresay not,” said he.  “What a pity for Chicago!  Are you wearying
+for Chicago, lassie?”
+
+“No,” said Bud, deliberating.  “It was pretty smelly, but my! I wish to
+goodness folk here had a little git-up-and-go to them!”
+
+“Indeed, I daresay it’s not a bit like Chicago,” admitted Auntie Bell.
+“It pleases myself that it’s just like Bonnie Scotland.”
+
+“It’s not a bit like Scotland either,” said Bud.  “I calc’lated Scotland
+’d be like a story-book all the time, chock-full of men-at-arms and
+Covenanters, and things father used to talk about, Sundays, when he was
+kind of mopish, and wanted to make me Scotch.  I’ve searched the woods
+for Covenanters and can’t find one; they must have taken to the tall
+timber, and I haven’t seen any men-at-arms since I landed, ’cepting the
+empty ones up in the castle lobby.”
+
+“What _did_ you think Scotland would be like, dear?” asked Ailie.
+
+“Between me and Winifred Wallace, we figured it would be a great place
+for chivalry and constant trouble among the crowned heads.  I expected
+there’d be a lot of ‘battles long ago,’ same as in the Highland Reaper in
+the sweet, sweet G.T.”
+
+“What’s G.T.?” asked Auntie Bell; and Bud laughed slyly, and looked at
+her smiling Auntie Ailie, and said: “We know, Auntie Ailie, don’t we?
+It’s GRAND!  And if you want to know, Auntie Bell, it’s just Mister
+Lovely Palgrave’s ‘Golden Treasury.’  _That’s_ a book, my Lord!  I
+expected there’d be battles every day—”
+
+“What a bloodthirsty child!” said Miss Ailie.
+
+“I don’t mean truly truly battles,” Bud hurried to explain, “but the kind
+that’s the same as a sound of revelry off—no blood, but just a lot of
+bang.  But I s’pose battles are gone out, like iron suits.  Then I
+thought there’d be almost nothing but cataracts and ravines
+and—and—mountain-passes, and here and there a right smart Alick in short
+trunks and a feather in his hat, winding a hunting-horn.  I used to
+think, when I was a little, wee, silly whitterick, that you wound a horn
+every Saturday night with a key, just like a clock; but I’ve known for
+years and years it’s just blowing.  The way father said, and from the
+things I read, I calc’lated all the folk in Scotland ’d hate each other
+like poison, and start a clan, and go out chasing all the other clans
+with direful slogans and bagpipes skirling wildly in the genial breeze.
+And the place would be crowded with lovelorn maidens—that kind with the
+starched millstones round their necks, like Queen Mary always wore.  My,
+it must have been rough on dear old Mary when she fell asleep in church!
+But it’s not a bit like that; it’s only like Scotland when I’m in bed,
+and the wind is loud, and I hear the geese.  Then I think of the trees
+all standing out in the dark and wet, and the hills too, the way they’ve
+done for years _and_ years, and the big lonely places with nobody in
+them, not a light even; and I get the croodles and the creeps, for that’s
+Scotland, full of bogies.  I think Scotland’s stone-dead.”
+
+“It’s no more dead than you are yourself,” said Miss Bell, determined
+ever to uphold her native land.  “The cleverest people in the world come
+from Scotland.”
+
+“So father used to say; but Jim, he said he guessed the cleverer they
+were the quicker they came.  I’m not a bit surprised they make a dash
+from home when they feel so dead and mopish and think of things and see
+that road.”
+
+“Road?” said Uncle Dan.  “What road?”
+
+“My road,” said the child.  “The one I see from my window: oh, how it
+rises and rises and winds and winds, and it just _shrieks_ on you to come
+right along and try.”
+
+“Try what?” asked her uncle curiously.
+
+“I dunno,” said Bud, thinking hard; “Auntie Ailie knows, and I ’spect
+Auntie Bell knows too.  I can’t tell what it is, but I fairly tickle to
+take a walk along.  Other times I feel I’d be mighty afraid to go, but
+Auntie Ailie says you should always do the things you’re afraid to do,
+for they’re most always the only things worth doing.”
+
+Mr Dyce, scratching the ear of Footles, who begged at the side of his
+chair, looked over the rims of his glasses and scrutinised the child.
+
+“All roads,” said he, “as you’ll find a little later, come to the same
+dead end, and most of us, though we think we’re picking our way, are all
+the time at the mercy of the Schoolmaster, like Geordie Jordon.  The only
+thing that’s plain in the present issue is that we’re not brisk enough
+here for Young America.  What do you think we should do to make things
+lively?”
+
+“Hustle,” said Bud.  “Why, nobody here moves faster’n a funeral, and they
+ought to gallop if they want to keep up with the band.”
+
+“I’m not in a hurry myself,” said her uncle, smiling.  “Maybe that’s
+because I think I’m all the band there is, myself.  But if you want to
+introduce the Chicago system you should start with Mrs Wright’s Italian
+warehouse down the street,—the poor body’s losing money trying to run her
+shop on philanthropic principles.”
+
+Bud thought hard a while.  “Phil—phil—What’s a philanthropic principle?”
+she asked.
+
+“It’s a principle on which you don’t expect much interest except in
+another world,” said her uncle.  “The widow’s what they call a Pilgrim,
+hereabouts; if the meek were to inherit the earth in a literal sense, she
+would long ago have owned the whole county.”
+
+“A truly Christian woman!” said Miss Bell.
+
+“I’m not denying it,” said Mr Dyce; “but even a Christian woman should
+think sometimes of the claims of her creditors, and between ourselves it
+takes me all my time to keep the wholesale merchants from hauling her to
+court.”
+
+“How do you manage it?” asked Ailie, with a twinkle in her eyes; but Dan
+made no reply,—he coughed and cleaned his spectacles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+THERE was joy a few days later in the Dyce’s kitchen when Peter the
+postman, with a snort that showed the bitterness of his feelings, passed
+through the window a parcel for Kate, that on the face of it had come
+from foreign parts.  “I don’t ken who it’s from, and ye’re no’ to think
+I’m askin’,” said he; “but the stamps alone for that thing must have cost
+a bonny penny.”
+
+“Did they, indeed!” said Kate, with a toss of her head.  “Ye’ll be glad
+to ken he can well afford it!” and she sniffed at the parcel, redolent of
+perfumes strange and strong.
+
+“Ye needna snap the nose off me,” said the postman, “I only made the
+remark.  What—what does the fellow do?”
+
+“He’s a traveller for railway tunnels,” retorted the maid of Colonsay,
+and shut the window with a bang, to tear open the parcel in a frenzy of
+expectation, and find a bottle of Genuine Riga Balsam—wonderful cure for
+sailors’ wounds!—another of Florida Water, and a silver locket, with a
+note from Charles saying the poem she had sent was truly grand, and
+wishing her many happy returns of the day.  Like many of Charles’s
+letters now, its meaning was, in parts, beyond her, until she could learn
+from Bud the nature of the one to which it was an answer,—for Bud was so
+far enraptured with the wandering sailor that she sometimes sent him
+letters which the servant never saw.  That day the breakfast service
+smelt of Florida Water, for Kate had drenched herself with the perfume,
+and Miss Bell was sure she had washed the dishes again with scented soap,
+as was the habit of the girl when first she came from Colonsay, and
+thought that nothing but Brown Windsor would do justice to Grandma
+Buntain’s tea-set used on Sundays.  But Bud could see the signs of
+Shipping Intelligence, and, as soon as she could, she hastened to the
+kitchen, for it was Saturday, and on Saturdays there were no lessons in
+the Dyce Academy.  Oh! how she and Kate fondled the bottles lovingly, and
+sniffed passionately at their contents, and took turn about of the
+locket!  The maid had but one regret, that she had no immediate use for
+Riga Balsam; but Bud was more devoted than that—she gently pricked the
+palm of her hand with a pin and applied the Genuine.  “Oh! how he must
+love me—us, I mean,” she exclaimed, and eagerly devoured his letter.
+
+“What did you say to him in the last?” asked Kate.  “He’s talking there
+about a poetry, and happy returns of the day.”
+
+Bud confessed she had made a poem for him from his beloved Kate, and had
+reckoned on fetching a gift of candy by telling him her birthday was on
+Monday.  “But really I’d just as lief have the balsam,” said she, “it’s
+perfectly lovely; how it nips!”
+
+“It’s not my birthday at all,” said Kate.  “My birthday’s always on the
+second Sunday in September.  I was born about the same time as Lady
+Anne—either a fortnight before or a fortnight after; I forget mysel’
+completely which it was, and I daresay so does she.”
+
+“No, but Monday’s my birthday, right enough,” said Bud, “and seeing that
+we’re sort of loving him in company, I s’posed it would be all the same.”
+
+“So it is, I’m not complainin’,” said the maid.  “And now we’ll have to
+send him something back.  What would you recommend?”
+
+They considered many gifts appropriate for a sailor,—sou’-westers,
+Bible-markers, woollen comforters, and paper-knives, scarf-pins, gloves,
+and ties.  Bud was sure that nothing would delight him like a book about
+a desert island, but Kate said no, a pipe was just the very ticket—a
+wooden pipe with silver mountings; the very one to suit was in the window
+of Mrs Wright’s Italian warehouse.
+
+“What’s an Italian warehouse?” asked the child.
+
+“You have me there!” said Kate, “unless, maybe, her husband was Italian
+before he went and died on her.  ‘Italian Warehouse’ is the only thing
+that’s on her sign.  She sells a thing for almost any price you like to
+offer, because the Bible says it’s not the thing at all to argy-bargy.”
+
+“_I_ know,” said Bud; “it’s what we call running a business on—on—on
+philanthropic principles.  I’d love to see a body do it.  I’ll run out
+and buy the pipe from Mrs Wright, Kate.”
+
+She departed on her errand down the town, at the other side of the
+church; and the hours of the forenoon passed, and dinner-time was almost
+come, and still there was no sign of her returning.  Kate would have lost
+her patience and gone to seek for her, but found so much to interest at
+the window that she quite forgot her messenger.  Something out of the
+ordinary was happening on the other side of the church.  Wanton Wully
+knew what it was, but of course he was not telling, for he was out as
+public crier, rousing the town with his hand-bell, and shouting “Notice!”
+with an air that promised some tremendous tidings; but beyond mysterious
+words like “bed-rock prices,” which he mumbled from a paper in his hand,
+there was nothing to show this proclamation differed from the common ones
+regarding herring at the quay or a sale of delf down-by at John Turner’s
+corner.  “What are ye crying?” they asked him, but being a man with the
+belief that he had a voice as clear as a concert-singer, he would not
+condescend to tell them.  Only when some one looked across his shoulder
+and read the paper for himself was it found that a sale described as
+“Revolutionary” was taking place at the Italian warehouse.  Half the town
+at once went to see what the decent body was up to.  Kate saw them
+hurrying down, and when they came back they were laughing.  “What’s the
+ploy?” she asked a passer-by.
+
+“A sale at the Pilgrim weedow’s,” she was told.  “She’s put past her
+Spurgeon’s Sermons and got a book about business, and she’s learnin’ the
+way to keep an Italian warehoose in Scotch.”
+
+Kate would have been down the town at once to see this marvel for
+herself, but her pot was on the boil, and here was the mistress coming
+down the stair, crying “Lennox, Lennox!”  The maid’s heart sank.  She had
+forgotten Lennox, and how could she explain her absence to a lady so
+particular?  But for the moment she was spared the explanation, for the
+bark of Footles filled the street and Mr Dyce came into the lobby,
+laughing.
+
+“You’re very joco!” said his sister, helping him off with his coat.
+“What are you laughing at?”
+
+“The drollest thing imaginable,” said he.  “I have just left Captain
+Consequence in a terrible rage about a letter that a boy has brought to
+him from Mrs Wright.  He’s one of the folk that boast of paying as they
+go but never make a start.  It seems he’s as much in debt to her as to
+most of the other merchants in the place, but wasn’t losing any sleep
+about it, for she’s such a softy.  This letter has given him a start.  He
+showed it to me, with the notion that it was a libel or a threat that
+might be actionable, but I assured him I couldn’t have written one more
+to the point myself.  It said that unless he paid at once, something
+would be apt to happen that would create him the utmost astonishment.”
+
+“Mercy on us!  That’s not very like the widow: she must be getting
+desperate.”
+
+“It was the wording of the thing amused me,” said Mr Dyce, walking into
+the parlour, still chuckling, “‘something will be apt to happen that will
+create you the utmost astonishment’—it suggests such awful possibilities.
+And it’s going to serve it’s purpose too, for the Captain’s off to pay
+her, sure it means a scandal.”
+
+Kate took the chance to rush round the kirk in search of her messenger.
+“This way for the big bargains!” cried some lads coming back from the
+Italian warehouse, or, “Hey! ye’ve missed a step”—which shows how funny
+we can be in the smallest burgh towns; but Kate said nothing, only
+“trash!” to herself in indignation, and tried by holding in her breath to
+keep from getting red.
+
+The shop of the Pilgrim widow suffered from its signboard, that was “far
+too big for its job, like the sweep that stuck in my granny’s chimney,”
+as Mr Dyce said.  Once the sign had been P. & A.’s, but P. & A.’s good
+lady tired of hearing her husband nicknamed the Italian, and it went back
+to the painter, who partly paid with it a debt to the Pilgrim widow, who
+long since rued her acquisition.  She felt in her soul it was a worldly
+vanity,—that a signboard less obtrusive on the public eye would more
+befit herself and her two meek little windows, where fly-papers, fancy
+goods, sweetmeats, cigarettes, country eggs, and cordial invitations to
+the Pilgrims Mission Bethel every Friday (_D._ _V._), eight o’clock, kept
+each other incongruous and dusty company.  A decent pious widow, but ah!
+so wanting any saving sense of guile.  The Pilgrim Mission was the thing
+she really lived for, and her shop was the Cross she bore.  But to-day it
+was scarcely recognisable: the windows had been swept of their stale
+contents, and one was filled with piles of rosy apples, the other with
+nuts that poured in a tempting cataract from a cask upset with an air of
+reckless prodigality.  A large hand-lettered bill was in each window; one
+said—
+
+                      HALLOWE’EN!  ARISE AND SHINE!
+
+and the other—
+
+                                DO IT NOW!
+
+what was to be done being left to the imagination.  All forenoon there
+had been a steady flow of customers, who came out of the shop with more
+than nuts or apples, greatly amazed at the change in the Pilgrim widow,
+who was cracking up her goods like any common sinner.  Behind the railed
+and curtained box in which she was supposed to keep her books and pray
+for the whole community, there seemed to be some secret stimulating
+influence, for when bad payers tried to-day to get a thing on credit, and
+she was on the point of yielding, she would dart into the box and out
+again as hard as steel, insisting that at every Revolutionary Sale the
+terms were cash.  She was giving bargains, but at her own price, never at
+her customers’, as it used to be.  The Health Saline—extract of the
+finest fruit, Cooling, Refreshing, Invigorating, Tonic (though indeed it
+looked like an old friend from Rochelle with a dash of sugar and
+tartaric)—was down a ha’penny, to less than what it cost, according to
+another hand-done bill upon the counter.  When they asked her how she
+could afford to sell the stuff below its cost, she seemed ashamed and
+startled, till she had a moment in behind the curtains, and then she told
+them it was all because of the large turn-over; she could not afford to
+sell the saline under cost if she did not sell it in tremendous
+quantities.
+
+Did they want Ward’s Matchless Polishing Paste?—alas (after a dash behind
+the curtains) she was completely out of it.  Of late it had been in such
+great demand that she got tired of ordering it every other week
+wholesale.  Yes, she was out of Ward’s, but (again the curtained box)
+what about this wonderful line in calf-foot jelly, highly praised by
+the—by the connoisseurs?  What were connoisseurs?  A connoisseur (again
+on reference behind the curtains) was one of those wealthy men who could
+swallow anything.
+
+“I’ll tell ye what it is,” said the tailor, “I see’t at last!  She’s got
+a book in there; I’ve seen’t before—‘The Way to Conduct a Retail
+Business’—and when she runs behind, it’s to see what she should say to
+the customers.  That’s where she got the notions for her windows and the
+‘Do it Now!’”
+
+But he was wrong—completely wrong, for when Kate came into the shop with
+“Have you seen Miss Lennox, Mrs Wright?  I sent her here a message hours
+ago,” Lennox herself came from the curtained box saying, “Hello, Kate;
+saw you first!  What can we do for you to-day?”
+
+“My stars! my lady, you’ll catch it!” said the maid.  “They’re waiting
+yonder on you for your dinner.”
+
+“I was just heading for home,” said Bud, making for the door.
+
+“My child! my child! my angel child!” cried the Pilgrim widow, going to
+kiss her, but Bud drew back.
+
+“Not to-day, please; I’m miles too big for kissing to-day,” said she, and
+marched solemnly out of the Italian warehouse.
+
+“What in the world were you doing away so long?” asked Kate.  “Were you
+carrying on at anything?”
+
+“I was paying for Charles’s pipe,” said the child, returning the money
+she had got for its purchase.  “That’s the sweetest lady, Mrs Wright, but
+my! ain’t she Baby Mine when it settles down to business?  When I wanted
+to buy the pipe, she was so tickled she wanted me to have it for nothing,
+seeing I was Mr Dyce’s niece.  She said Uncle Dan was a man of God who
+saved her more than once from bankruptcy, and it was a pretty old pipe
+anyway, that had been in the window since the time she got changed and
+dropped brocaded dolmans.  You’d think it made her ache to have folk come
+in her shop and spend money; I guess she was raised for use in a free
+soup-kitchen.  I said I’d take the pipe for nothing if she’d throw in a
+little game with it.  ‘What game?’ said she—oh, she’s a nice lady!—and I
+said I was just dying to have a try at keeping a really really shop, and
+would show her Chicago way.  _And you bet I did_, _Kate MacNeill_!”
+
+She came in with the soup, but no question was put till her uncle asked
+the blessing, and then, before a spoon was lifted, Auntie Bell said,
+“Lassie, lassie, where in the world have you been?”
+
+“Keeping shop for Mrs Wright,” said Bud.
+
+“Tcht! tcht! you’re beyond redemption,” cried her aunt.  “A child like
+you keeping shop!”
+
+“A bonny pair of shopkeepers, the widow and you!  Which of you counted
+the change?” said Uncle Dan.  “Tell us all about it.”
+
+“Well, I had the loveliest time,” said Bud.  “It would take till tea-time
+to tell just ’zactly what a lovely day it was, but I’ll hurry up and make
+it a front scene.  What you said, Uncle Dan, about her running a shop on
+phil—on philanthropic principles made me keen to see her doing it, and I
+went down a message for Kate, and offered to help.  She ’lowed herself
+she wasn’t the best there was in the land at keeping shop, and didn’t
+seem to make much money at it, but said thank the Lord she had the
+priceless boon of health.  I was the first customer she’d set eyes on all
+the morning, ’cept a man that wanted change for half-a-crown and hadn’t
+the half-crown with him, but said he’d pay it when he didn’t see her
+again, and she said she felt sure that trade was going to take a turn.  I
+said I thought it would turn quicker if—if—if she gave it a push herself,
+and she said she dared say there was something in it, and hoped I was in
+the fold.  I said I was, sure, and at that she cried out ‘Hallelujah!’
+Every other way she was a perfectly perfect lady; she made goo-goo eyes
+at me, and skipped round doing anything I told her.  First she cleared
+all the old truck out of the windows, and filled them up with nuts and
+apples for Hallowe’en, till they looked the way windows never looked in
+Scotland in all creation before, I s’pose.  ‘They’ll think it kind of
+daft,’ says she, scared-like, ‘they’re not like any other windows in the
+place.’  ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘and that’s the very thing to jar the
+eye of the passer-by.’  Jim Molyneux said a shop-window was like a
+play-bill, it wanted a star line—a feature—a whoop.  Then I tried to
+think of the ’cute things shopkeepers print in Chicago, but couldn’t
+remember any ’cepting ‘Pants two dollars a leg, seats free,’ but the
+widow said she didn’t sell pants.  Then I thought of some natty little
+cards I’d seen that said ‘Arise and Shine!’ and ‘Do it Now!’ so I got her
+to print these words good and big, and put them in the window.  She
+wanted to know what they meant, but I said I couldn’t tell from Adam, but
+they would make the people wonder, and come in the shop to find out, and
+then it would be up to her to sell them something and pry the money out
+of them before they baulked.  Oh, Auntie, how I go on!” and here Bud
+stopped almost breathless and a little ashamed.
+
+“Go on! go on!” cried Ailie.
+
+“Well, I got behind a curtain into a little box-office, where the widow
+kept a cash-book awfully doggy-eared, and a pile of printed sermons, and
+heaps of tracts about doing to others as you should be done by, and
+giving to the poor and lending to the Lord.  She read bits of them to me,
+and said she sometimes wondered if Captain Brodie was too poor to pay for
+eighteen months’ tobacco, but she didn’t like to press him, seeing he had
+been in India and fought his country’s battles.  She said she felt she
+must write him again for her money, but couldn’t think of what to say
+that would be Christian and polite and gentle, but still make him see she
+wanted the money pretty bad.  I said I would tell her what to say that
+would suit just fine, and I dictated it—”
+
+“I saw the letter,” said Uncle Dan, twinkling through his glasses.  “It
+was a work of genius,—go on! go on!”
+
+“Then folk began to come in for nuts and apples, and asked what ‘Arise
+and Shine’ and ‘Do it Now’ meant.  She said they were messages from the
+angel of the Lord—meaning me, I s’pose,—though, goodness knows, I’m not
+much of an angel, am I, Auntie Bell?  Then the folk would fade away,
+looking a bit rattled, and come back in a while and ask the price of
+things.  She’d say she wasn’t sure, but she thought about a shilling, or
+maybe ninepence seeing they had a young family, and then they’d want the
+stuff on credit, and she’d yammer away to them till I got wild.  When
+they were gone I had a good heart-to-heart talk with her, and said
+phil—philanthropic principles were a great mistake in a small Italian
+warehouse, and that she ought to give the customers a chance of doing
+unto others as they would be done by.  She made more goo-goo eyes at me,
+and said I was a caution, sure enough, and perhaps I was right, for she
+had never looked at it that way before.  After that she spunked up
+wonderful.  I got her to send Mr Wanton through the town with his bell,
+saying there was everything you wanted at Mrs Wright’s at bed-rock
+prices; and when people came in after that and wanted to get things for
+nothing, or next to it, she’d pop into the box where I lay low, and ask
+me what she was to say next, and then skip out to them as sharp as a tack
+and show they needn’t try to toy with her.  She says she made more money
+to-day by my playing shop Chicago-way than she’d make in a week her own
+way.  Why, I’m talking, and talking, and talking, and my soup’s
+stone-cold!”
+
+“So’s mine,” said Uncle Dan, with a start.
+
+“And mine!” said Auntie Ailie, with a smile.
+
+“And mine too, I declare!” cried Miss Bell, with a laugh they all joined
+in, till Footles raised his voice protesting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+YES, that was one bright day in the dismal season, the day she tutored
+the Pilgrim widow in the newer commerce.  There was a happy night to
+follow soon, and it is my grief that my pen cannot grasp the spirit of
+it, so that reading you would laugh with her and whiles be eerie.  ’Tis
+true, there was little in the thing itself, as in most that at the age of
+twelve impress us for all our lives, but it met in some degree the
+expectations that her father’s tales of Scotland had sent home with her.
+Hitherto all had been natural and wellnigh commonplace that she had
+experienced, all except the folk so queer and kind and comical in a
+different way from those in Chicago, the sounds she could hear as she lay
+in her attic bed—the wind-call, and the honk of geese, and the feeling of
+an island hopelessly remote from the new bright world that best she
+knew,—remote and lost, a speck on the sea far, far from great America.
+The last things vaguely troubled her.  For she was child enough as yet to
+shiver at things not touched by daylight nor seemingly made plain by the
+common-sense of man.  She could laugh at the ghosts that curdled the
+blood of the maid of Colonsay; and yet at times, by an effort of the
+will, she could feel all Kate’s terror at some manifestation no more
+alarming than the cheep of mice or a death-watch ticking in a corner
+cupboard.  These were but crude and vulgar fears, self-encouraged little
+actress terrors.  It took more than the hint of ghost or the menace of
+the ticking insect in the wood to wake in her the feeling of worlds
+unrealised, encompassing, that she could get from casual verses in her
+Auntie Ailie’s book of Scottish ballads, or find o’erwhelm her of a
+sudden on looking from her window into the garden bare and pallid below
+the moon.
+
+This night there should be moon according to the penny almanac, and
+Wanton Wully lit no lamps, but went home for a good sleep to himself, as
+his saying went, and left the burgh to such illumination as should come
+to it by the caprice of the clouds.  It lay, the little place, for most
+of the night in darkness: a mirk so measureless deep, when the shops were
+shut, that the red-lit skylight windows at the upper end of the town
+seemed by some miracle to lift themselves and soar into the
+heavens—square, monstrous flitting stars to the vision of Bud, as she
+stood with Auntie Ailie at the door watching for Uncle Dan’s return from
+his office.  To bring the soaring windows back to their natural
+situation, she had to stand a little way inside the lobby and establish
+their customary place against the darkness by the lintel of the door.
+
+From the other side of the church came a sound of dull monotonous
+drumming—no cheerful rhythmic beat like the drumming of John Taggart, but
+a mournful thumping, fitful in flaws of the bland night wind.
+
+“What’s that, Auntie?” she asked.
+
+“The guizards,” said Miss Ailie, looking down upon her in the lobby light
+with a smile she could not see.  “Did you never hear of the guizards,
+Bud?”
+
+Bud had never heard of the guizards; that was one thing, surely, her
+father had forgotten.  She had heard of Hallowe’en, she said, when
+further questioned.  Wasn’t it the night for ducking into tubs for
+apples?  The Pilgrim widow had told her Hallowe’en was coming, and it was
+for Hallowe’en she had sold so many nuts and apples; but the widow said
+she felt ashamed to do it, for Hallowe’en was not approved of by the
+Mission, being idolatrous and gay.  “Is it very gay?” asked Bud
+anxiously.
+
+“So I used to think it,” said her aunt.
+
+“Then I s’pose it must be wicked,” said the child regretfully.  “I’d have
+expected you’d have Hallowe’en night here in the house if it hadn’t been
+very bad.  That widow did me a lot of good, showing me what a heap of
+happy things are full of sin.  She knew them all!  I s’pose she got them
+in the tracts.  Yes, she did me a lot of good; I—I almost wish I hadn’t
+met that widow.”
+
+“Do you feel wicked when you’re gay?” asked Miss Ailie.
+
+“Mercy on us! not a mite!” said Bud.  “I feel plumb full of goodness when
+I’m gay; but that’s my youth and innocence.  The widow says it is, and I
+guess what she says goes.”
+
+“Still, do you know, my dear, I’d risk a little gaiety now and then,”
+said Auntie Ailie.  “Who knows?  The widow, though a worthy lady, is what
+in Scotland we call an auld wife, and it’s generally admitted that auld
+wives of either sex have no monopoly of wisdom.  If you’re wanting pious
+guidance, Bud, I don’t know where you’ll get it better than from Auntie
+Bell; and she fairly dotes on Hallowe’en and the guizards.  By-and-by
+you’ll see the guizards, and—and—well, just wait and we’ll find what else
+is to be seen.  I do wish your Uncle Dan would hurry.”
+
+The street was quite deserted, but did not show its vacancy until the
+clouds for a moment drifted off the moon that rolled behind the steeple.
+Then the long grey stretch of tenements came out unreal and pale on the
+other side of the street, their eaves and chimneys throwing inky shadows,
+their red-lit windows growing of a sudden wan.  Over them hung the
+ponderous kirk, the master shadow, and all—the white-harled walls, the
+orange windows, the glittering cold and empty street—seemed like the
+vision of a dream.  Then the clouds wrapped up the moon again, and the
+black was the black of Erebus.  But as it fell, the dull drums seemed to
+come nearer, and from the head of the street, the windy corner where
+Uncle Dan had his office, small moons came, purple and golden,
+fantastically carved.  They ran from house to house, and grouped in
+galaxies, or singly fell apart, swinging and giddy orbs.  For a moment
+Bud looked at them bewildered, then gave a happy scream.
+
+“The lanterns! the lanterns! look at the lanterns, Auntie.  Is that
+Hallowe’en?”
+
+“That’s part of it, at least,” said her Aunt.  “These are the guizards
+with their turnip lanterns; they’re going round the houses singing;
+by-and-by we’ll hear them.”
+
+“My! I wish to goodness I had a lantern like that.  To swing a lantern
+like that ’d feel like being a lighthouse or the statue of Liberty at New
+York.  I’d rather have a turnip lantern than a raft of dolls.”
+
+“Did you never have one?”
+
+“No,” said Bud sorrowfully.  “You have no idea what a poor mean place
+Chicago is—not a thing but common electric light!” and Miss Ailie smiled
+gleefully to herself again like one possessed of a lovely secret.  “I
+wish that brother of mine would come quickly,” she said, and at the
+moment he came out of the darkness to them with a comical look of
+embarrassment in his face and in his hand an unlighted turnip lantern!
+
+“Here, Bud,” said he, “take this, quickly, before some silly body sees me
+with it and thinks it’s for myself.  I have the name, I know, of being
+daft enough already, and if it gets about the country that Daniel Dyce
+was going round at Hallowe’en with a turnip lantern, they would think he
+had lost his head in a double sense and it would be very bad for
+business.”
+
+“Uncle!” cried the child in ecstasy, “you’re the loveliest, sweetest man
+in the whole wide world.”
+
+“I daresay,” said he.  “I have been much admired when I was younger.  But
+in this case don’t blame me.  I wash my hands of the responsibility.  I
+got my orders for that thing from your Auntie Bell.”
+
+“My! ain’t it cute?  Did you make it?” asked Bud, surveying the rudely
+carved exterior with delight, and her uncle, laughing, put on his glasses
+to look at it himself.
+
+“No,” said he, “though I’ve made a few of them in my time.  All that’s
+needed is a knife or a mussel-shell, and a dose of Gregory’s Mixture in
+the morning.”
+
+“What’s the Gregory’s Mixture for?”
+
+“In making a turnip lantern you eat the whole inside of it,” said Mr
+Dyce.  “Perhaps I might have made this one myself if it wasn’t that I
+know I would hate to see the inside wasted, and still I have mind of the
+Gregory.  I bought the lantern from a boy at the head of the street who
+was looking very gash and ill, and seemed suspiciously glad to get quit
+of it.  I’m thinking that his Gregory’s nearly due.”
+
+Bud hardly listened—she was so taken up with her gift.  She pounced at
+the handle of the kitchen door and found it snibbed within.  “Kate!
+Kate!” she cried, “let me in to light my lantern.”
+
+Kate was to be heard moving within, and there was a curious sound of
+giggling, but no answer.
+
+“Open the door, quick, quick!” cried Bud again; and this time Auntie
+Bell, inside, said, “Yes, open, Kate, I think we’re ready.”
+
+The door of the kitchen opened, and before the eyes of the child was a
+spectacle the more amazing and delightful since all day they had taken
+pains to keep the preparations secret.  A dozen children, who had been
+smuggled in by the back-door in the close, were seated round a tub of
+water with floating apples, and they were waiting her presence to begin
+their fun.
+
+Oh, how happy was that hour!  But not just then came the thrill of which
+I’m thinking.  It was not the laughter and the ducking in the tub, the
+discoveries of rings and buttons, thimbles, and scuddy little dolls and
+silver pieces hidden in the mound of champed potatoes Kate had cooked;
+nor the supper that followed, nor the mating of nuts on the fire-ribs
+that gave the eerie flavour of old time and the book of ballads.  She
+liked them all; her transport surely was completed when the guizards
+entered black-faced, garmented as for a masque, each thumping a sheepskin
+stretched on a barrel-hoop—the thing we call a dallan.  She had never
+discovered before what a soul of gaiety was in Auntie Bell, demure so
+generally, practising sobriety, it might seem, as if she realised her
+daffing days were over and it was time for her to remember all her years.
+To-night Miss Bell outdid even Ailie in her merriment, led the games in
+the spacious kitchen, and said such droll things, and kept the company in
+such a breeze that Ailie cried at last, “I think, Bell, that you’re fey!”
+
+“Indeed, and I daresay you’re right,” admitted Bell, sinking in a chair
+exhausted.  “At my time of life it’s daft; I have not laughed so much
+since I was at Barbara Mushet’s seminary.”
+
+Not these things, but the half-hour after, was what made the evening
+memorable for the child.  Nothing would satisfy her but that she should
+light her lantern and convoy the other children home, so Kate went with
+her, and the happy band went through the street, each dropping off at her
+own house front till the last was gone, and then Bud and the maid turned
+back.
+
+But Kate had a project in her mind that had been there all night since
+she had burned two nuts for herself and Charles in the kitchen fire, and
+found them willing to flame quite snug together.  That so far, was
+satisfactory, but she wanted more assurance of the final triumph of her
+love.  There was, it seemed, a skilful woman up the lane who knew spells
+and magic, read tea-cups and the cards, and could unravel dreams.
+Notably was she good at Hallowe’en devices, and Bud must come and see
+her, for it would not take a minute.
+
+They found their way by the light of the lantern to the spaewife’s door,
+and to a poor confidant of fate and fortune surely, since she had not
+found them kinder to herself, for she dwelt in a hovel where foolish
+servant-girls came at night with laughter and fears to discover what the
+future held for them.  Bud, standing on the floor in the circle of light
+from her own lantern, watched the woman drop the white of an egg in a
+glass of water.  In the clot of the albumen, which formed some wavering
+vague figures, she peered and found, she said, the masts of ships and a
+crowded harbour, and that meant a sailor husband.
+
+“Was I not sure of it!” cried Kate, triumphant; but that was not the end
+of the ceremony, for she was bidden to sip a little from the glass,
+without swallowing, and go dumb into the night till she heard the
+Christian name of a man, and that was the name of the sailor husband.
+Kate sipped from the glass of destiny, and passed with Bud into the
+darkness of the lane.  It was then there came to the child the delicious
+wild eerieness that she was beginning now to coax to her spirit whenever
+she could, and feed her fancies on.  The light of the lantern only wanly
+illumined the lane they hurried through; so plain and grey and ancient
+and dead looked the houses pressing on either hand with windows
+shuttered, that it seemed to Bud she had come by magic on a shell as
+empty of life as the armour in the castle hall.  By-and-by the servant,
+speechless, stopped at a corner listening.  No sound of human life for a
+moment, but then a murmur of voices up the town, to which on an impulse
+she started running with Lennox at her heels, less quickly since the
+light of her lantern must be nursed from the wind.  Bud fell behind in
+the race for the voice of fate; the sound of the footsteps before her
+died away in the distance, and her light went out, and there she stood
+alone for the first time in the dark of Scotland—Scotland where witches
+still wrought spells!  A terror that was sweet to think of in the
+morning, whose memory she cherished all her days, seized on her, and she
+knew that all the ballad book was true!  One cry she gave, that sounded
+shrilly up the street—it was the name of Charles, and Kate, hearing it,
+gulped and came back.
+
+“I guessed that would fetch you,” said Bud, panting.  “I was so scared I
+had to say it, though I s’pose it means I’ve lost him for a husband.”
+
+“My stars! you are the clever one!” said the grateful maid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+SPRING came, and its quickening; forest and shrub and flower felt the new
+sap rise; she grew in the garden then, the child—in that old Scottish
+garden, sheltered lownly in the neuk of the burgh walls.  It must have
+been because the Dyces loved so much their garden, and spent so many
+hours there, that they were so sanely merry, nor let too often or too
+long the Scots forebodings quell their spirits, but got lessons of hope
+from the circling of the seasons, that give us beauty and decay in an
+unvarying alternation.
+
+“It is the time,” used Ailie to say of the spring, “when a delicious
+feeling steals over you of wanting to sit down and watch other people
+work.”
+
+“I’ll need to have the lawn-mower sharpened; it may be needed at any
+moment by the neighbours,” said her brother Dan.
+
+They watched upspring the green spears of the daffodils, that by-and-by
+should bear their flags of gold.
+
+And Wanton Wully, when he was not bell-ringing or cleaning the streets,
+or lounging on the quay to keep tally of ships that never came, being at
+ports more propinque to the highways of the world, where folks are making
+fortunes and losing much innocent diversion, wrought—as he would call
+it—in the Dyce’s garden.  Not a great gardener, admittedly, for to be
+great in versatility is of necessity to miss perfection in anything, so
+that the lowest wages in the markets of the world are for the handy man.
+But being handy is its own reward, carrying with it the soothing sense of
+self-sufficiency, so we need not vex ourselves for Wully.  As he said
+himself, he “did the turn” for plain unornamental gardening, though in
+truth he seemed to think he did it best when sitting on his barrow trams,
+smoking a thoughtful pipe, and watching the glad spring hours go by at a
+cost of sixpence each to the lawyer who employed him.
+
+Bud often joined him on the trams, and gravely listened to him, thinking
+that a man who did so many different and interesting things in a day was
+wise and gifted beyond ordinary.  In the old and abler years he had been
+a soldier, and, nursing flowers nowadays, his mind would oft
+incongruously dwell on scenes remote and terribly different, where he had
+delved in foreign marl for the burial of fallen comrades.
+
+“Tell me Inkermann again, Mr Wanton,” Bud would say, “and I’ll shoo off
+the birds from the blub-flowers.”
+
+“I’ll do that, my dearie!” he would answer, filling another pipe, and
+glad of an excuse to rest from the gentle toil of raking beds and chasing
+the birds that nipped the tips from peeping tulip leaves.  “To the
+mischief with them birds! the garden’s fair polluted wi’ them!  God knows
+what’s the use o’ them except for chirping, chirping—  Choo! off wi’ ye
+at once or I’ll be after ye!—  Ay, ay, Inkermann.  It was a gey long day,
+I’m tellin’ ye, from a quarter past six till half-past four; slaughter,
+slaughter a’ the time: me wi’ an awfu’ hacked heel, and no’ a bit o’
+anything in my stomach.  A nesty saft day, wi’ a smirr o’ rain.  We were
+as black as—as black as—as—”
+
+“As black as the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat,” Bud prompted him.  “Go on!  I
+mind the very words.”
+
+“I only said that the once, when I lost the place,” said Wully, shocked
+at her glibness in the uptake.  “And it’s not a thing for the like o’ you
+to say at all; it’s only the word o’ a rowdy sodger.”
+
+“Well, ain’t I the limb!  I’ll not say it again,” promised the child;
+“you needn’t look as solemn’s the Last Trump; go on, go on!”
+
+“As black as a ton o’ coal, wi’ the creesh o’ the cartridges and the
+poother; it was the Minie gun, ye ken.  And the Rooshians would be just
+ower there between the midden and the cold frame, and we would be coming
+down on them—it micht be ower the sclates o’ Rodger’s hoose yonder.  We
+were in the Heavy Diveesion, and I kill’t my first man that I kent o’
+about where the yellow crocus is.  Puir sowl!  I had nae ill-will to the
+man, I’ll guarantee ye that but we were baith unloaded when we met each
+other, and it had to be him or me.”
+
+He paused and firmed his mouth until the lips were lost among the puckers
+gathered round them, a curious glint in his eyes.
+
+“Go on!” cried Bud, sucking in her breath with a horrid expectation; “ye
+gie’d him—ye gie’d him—”
+
+“I gie’d him—I tell’t ye what I gie’d him before.  Will I need to say’t
+again?”
+
+“Yes,” said Bud, “for that’s your top note.”
+
+“I gie’d him—I gie’d him the—the BAGGONET!” cried the gardener, with a
+sudden, frightful, furious flinging of the arms, and then—oh, silly Wully
+Oliver!—began to weep, or at least to show a tear.  For Bud had taught
+him to think of all that lay beyond that furious thrust of the
+bayonet—the bright brave life extinguished, the mother rendered
+childless, or the children fatherless, in some Russian home.
+
+Bell, the thrifty woman, looking from the scullery window, and seeing
+time sadly wasted at twelve bawbees the hour, would drop the shawl she
+was making, and come out and send the child in to her lessons, but still
+the orra gardener did not hurry to his task, for he knew the way to keep
+Miss Dyce in an idle crack although she would not sit on his barrow
+trams.
+
+“A wonderfu’ wean that!” would be his opening.  “A perfect caution!  I
+can see a difference on her every day; she grows like a willow withy, and
+she’s losin’ yon awfu’ Yankee awcent she had about her when she came at
+first.  She can speak as bonny English noo as you or me when she puts her
+mind to’t.”
+
+“I’m afraid it would not be very difficult for her to do that, Willy,”
+said Miss Bell.  “She could always speak in any way she wanted, and
+indeed the first time that we heard her she was just yoursel’ on a New
+Year’s morning, even to the hiccough.  I hope you’ll keep a watch on what
+you say to her; the bairn picks up the things she hears so fast, and
+she’s so innocent, that it’s hardly canny to let her listen much to the
+talk of a man that’s been a soldier—not that I blame the soldiers, Willy,
+bless them all for Scotland, young or old!”
+
+“Not a word out of place from me, Miss Dyce,” would he cry, emphatic.
+“Only once I lost the place and slippit out a hell, and could have bit my
+tongue out for it.  We heard, ye ken, a lot o’ hells out yonder roond
+aboot Sevastapol: it wasna Mr Meikle’s Sunday-school.  But ye needna fear
+that Wully Oliver would learn ill language to a lady like the wee one.
+Whatever I am that’s silly when the dram is in, I hope I’m aye the
+perfect gentleman.”
+
+“Indeed I never doubted it,” said Miss Bell.  “But you know yourself
+we’re anxious that she should be all that’s gentle, nice, and clean.
+When you’re done raking this bed—dear me! I’m keeping you from getting at
+it—it’ll be time for you to go home for dinner.  Take a bundle of rhubarb
+for the mistress.”
+
+“Thanky, thanky, me’m,” said Wanton Wully, “but to tell the truth we’re
+kind o’ tired o’ rhubarb; I’m getting it by the stone from every bit o’
+grun’ I’m labourin’ in.  I wish folk were so rife wi’ plooms or
+strawberries.”
+
+Bell smiled.  “It’s the herb of kindness,” said she.  “There’s aye a
+reason for everything in nature, and rhubarb’s meant to keep our
+generosity in practice.”
+
+And there she would be—the foolish woman! keeping him at the crack, the
+very thing he wanted, till Mr Dyce himself, maybe, seeing his silver
+hours mishandled, would come to send his sister in, and see that his
+gardener earned at least a little of his wages.
+
+“A terrible man for the ladies, William!  You must have had a taking way
+with you when you were in the Army,” was all that the lawyer had to say.
+“There was some talk about doing a little to the garden, but, hoots man!
+don’t let it spoil your smoke!”
+
+It was then you would see Wanton Wully busy.
+
+Where would Bud be then?  At her lessons? no, no, you may be sure of it,
+but in with Kate of Colonsay giving the maid the bloody tale of
+Inkermann.  It was a far finer and more moving story as it came from Bud
+than ever it was on the lips of Wanton Wully.  From him she only got the
+fling of the arms that drove the bayonet home, the lips pursed up, as if
+they were gathered by a string, the fire of the moment, and the broad
+Scots tongue he spoke in.  To what he gave she added fancy and the drama.
+
+“—as black as a ton o’ coal wi’ the creesh o’ the cartridges . . . either
+him or me . . . I gie’d him . . . I gie’d him . . . I shut my eyes, and
+said, ‘O God, Thy pardon!’ and gie’d him the BAGGONET!”
+
+Kate’s apron at that would fly up to cover her eyes, for she saw before
+her all the bloody spectacle.  “I’m that glad,” she would say, “that my
+lad’s a sailor.  I couldna sleep one iota at night thinkin’ of their
+baggonets if he was a man-o’-war.  And that puts me in mind, my dear,
+it’s more than a week since we sent the chap a letter.  Have you time the
+now to sit and write a scrape to Hamburg on the Elbow—imports iron ore?”
+
+And Bud had time, and sit she would and write a lovely letter to Charles
+Maclean of Oronsay.  She told him that her heart was sore, but she must
+confess that she had one time plighted her troth to a Russian army
+officer, who died, alas! on the bloody field.  His last words, as his
+life-blood slowly ebbed away, were—
+
+“What _would_ be the last words of a Russian officer who loved you?”
+asked Bud, biting her pen in her perplexity.
+
+“Toots! anything—‘my best respects to Kate,’” said the maid, who had
+learned by this time that the letters Charles liked the most were the
+ones where Bud most freely used imagination.
+
+“I don’t believe it would,” said Bud.  “It ’d sound far too calm for a
+man that’s busy dying;” but she put it down all the same, feeling it was
+only fair that Kate should have some say in the letters written in her
+name.
+
+That was the day they gave him a hint that a captain was wanted on the
+yacht of Lady Anne.
+
+And still Kate’s education made some progress, as you may see from what
+she knew of Hamburg, though she was not yet the length of writing her own
+love-letters.  She would sit at times at night for hours quite docile,
+knitting in the kitchen, listening to the reading of the child.  A score
+of books had been tried on her by Aunt Ailie’s counsel (for she was in
+the secret of this Lower Dyce Academy), but none there was that hit the
+pupil’s fancy half so much as her own old favourite penny novelettes till
+they came one happy day to ‘The Pickwick Papers.’  Kate grew very fond of
+‘The Pickwick Papers.’  The fun of them being in a language quite unknown
+in Colonsay, was almost all beyond her.  But “that poor Mr Puckwuck!” she
+would cry at each untoward accident; “oh, the poor wee man!” and the folk
+were as real to her as if she had known them all in Colonsay.  If Dickens
+could have known the curious sentiments his wandering hero roused in this
+Highland servant mind, he would have greatly wondered.
+
+While Bud was tutoring Kate that spring, Miss Bell was thinking to take
+up the training of Bud herself in wiselike housekeeping.  The child grew
+as fast in her mind as in her body: each day she seemed to drift farther
+away from the hearth and into the world from which her auntie would
+preserve her—into the world whose doors books widely opened, Auntie
+Ailie’s magic key of sympathy, and the genius of herself.  So Bell
+determined there and then to coax her into the gentle arts of domesticity
+that ever had had a fascination for herself.  She went about it, oh, so
+cunningly! letting Bud play at the making of beds and the dusting of the
+stair-rails and the parlour beltings—the curly-wurly places, as she
+called them, full of quirks and holes and corners that the unelect like
+Kate of Colonsay will always treat perfunctorily in a general wipe that
+only drives the dirt the farther in.  Bud missed not the tiniest corner
+nor the deepest nook: whatever she did, she did fastidiously, much to the
+joy of her aunt, who was sure it was a sign she was meant by the Lord for
+a proper housewife.  But the child soon tired of making beds and dusting,
+as she did of white-seam sewing; and when Bell deplored this falling off,
+Ailie said: “You cannot expect everybody to have the same gifts as
+yourself.  Now that she has proved she’s fit to clean a railing properly,
+she’s not so much to blame if she loses interest in it.  The child’s a
+genius, Bell, and to a person of her temperament the thing that’s easily
+done is apt to be contemptuous: the glory’s in the triumph over
+difficulties, in getting on—getting on—getting on,” and Ailie’s face grew
+warm with some internal fire.
+
+At that speech Bell was silent.  She thought it just another of Ailie’s
+haiverings; but Mr Dyce, who heard, suddenly became grave.
+
+“Do you think it’s genius or precocity?” he asked.
+
+“They’re very much the same thing,” said Ailie.
+
+“If I could be the child I was; if I could just remember—”  She stopped
+herself and smiled.
+
+“What vanity!” said she; “what conceit!  If I could be the child I was, I
+dare say I would be pretty commonplace after all, and still have the same
+old draigled pinnies; but I have a notion that Lennox was never meant to
+make beds, dust stair-railings, or sit in a parlour listening, demure, to
+gossip about the village pump and Sacrament Sunday bonnets.  To do these
+things is no discredit to the women who are meant to do them, and who do
+them well; but we cannot all be patient Marthas.  I know, because I’ve
+honestly tried my best myself.”
+
+“When you say that, you’re laughing at me, I fear,” said Bell, a little
+blamefully.
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of you,” said her sister, vexed.  “And if I was, and
+had been laughing, I would be laughing at the very things I love; it’s
+only the other things that make me solemn.  Your way, Bell, was always
+clear before you,—there you were the lucky woman; with genius, as we have
+it in the child, the way’s perplexed and full of dangers.”
+
+“Is she to be let drift her own way?”
+
+“We got her ten years too late to prevent it,” said Miss Ailie firmly,
+and looked at her brother Dan for some assistance.  He had Footles on his
+lap, stroking his tousy back, and he listened with twinkling eyes to the
+argument, humming the air of the day, that happened to be “Robin Tamson’s
+Smiddy, O!”
+
+“You’re both right and you’re both wrong, as Mr Cleland used to say if he
+was taking a dram with folk that had an argument,” said the lawyer.  “But
+I’m not so clever as Colin Cleland, for I can’t ring the bell and order
+in the _media sententia_.  This I’ll say, that, to my mind, the child is
+lucky if she’s something short of genius.  If I had had a son, my prayer
+would always be that he should be off and on about the ordinary.  It’s
+lonely on the mountain-top, and genius generally seems to go with a poor
+stomach or a bad lung, and pays an awful price for every ecstasy!”
+
+“Shakespeare!” suggested Miss Ailie.
+
+“And Robert Burns!” cried Bell.  “Except for the lass and the glass and
+the ran-dan—  Poor misguided laddie! he was like the folk he lived among.
+And there was Walter Scott, the best and noblest man God ever gave to
+Scotland, he was never on the mountain-top except it was to bring a lot
+of people with him there.”
+
+Mr Dyce cleaned his glasses and chuckled.  “H’m,” said he, “I admit there
+are exceptions.  But please pass me my slippers, Bell: I fall back on
+Colin Cleland,—you’re both right and you’re both wrong.”
+
+Miss Bell was so put about at this that she went at once to the kitchen
+to start her niece on a course of cookery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+“KATERIN!” she said, coming into the kitchen with a handful of paper
+cuttings, and, hearing her, the maid’s face blenched.
+
+“I declare I never broke an article the day!” she cried protestingly,
+well accustomed to that formal address when there had been an accident
+among her crockery.
+
+“I wasn’t charging you,” said her mistress.  “Dear me! it must be an
+awful thing a guilty conscience!  I was thinking to give you—and maybe
+Lennox, if she would not mind—a lesson or two in cookery.  It’s a needful
+thing in a house with anything of a family.  You know what men are!”
+
+“Fine that!” said Kate.  “They’re always thinking what they’ll put in
+their intervals, the greedy deevils! beg your pardon, but it’s not a
+swear in the Gaelic.”
+
+“There’s only one Devil in any language, Kate,” said Miss Bell.  “‘How
+art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’  And I am
+glad to think he is oftener on our foolish tongues than in our hearts.  I
+have always been going to give you a cookery-book—”
+
+“A cookery-book!” cried the maid.  “Many a time I saw one out in
+Colonsay: for the minister’s wife had one they called Meg Dods, that was
+borrowed for every wedding.  But it was never much use to us, for it
+started everything with ‘Take a clean dish,’ or ‘Mince a remains of
+chicken,’ and neither of them was very handy out in the isle of
+Colonsay.”
+
+Miss Bell laid out her cuttings on the dresser—a mighty pile of recipes
+for soups and stews, puddings and cakes, sweetmeats, and cordial wines
+that could be made deliciously from elder and mulberry, if hereabouts we
+had such fruits to make them with.  She had been gathering these scraps
+for many years, for the household column was her favourite part of the
+paper after she was done with the bits that showed how Scotsmen up in
+London were at the head of everything, or did some doughty deed on the
+field of war.  She hoarded her cuttings as a miser hoards his notes, but
+never could find the rich sultana cake that took nine eggs, when it was
+wanted, but only the plain one costing about one-and-six.  Sometimes
+Ailie would, in mischief, offer to look through the packet for recipes
+rich and rare that had been mentioned; they were certainly there (for
+Bell had read them gloatingly aloud when she cut them out), but Bell
+would never let her do it, always saying, “Tuts! never mind; Dan likes
+this one better, and the other may be very nice in print but it’s too
+rich to be wholesome, and it costs a bonny penny.  You can read in the
+papers any day there’s nothing better for the health than simple
+dieting.”  So it was that Mr Dyce had some monotony in his meals, but
+luckily was a man who never minded that, liking simple old friends best
+in his bill-of-fare as in his boots and coats and personal acquaintances.
+Sometimes he would quiz her about her favourite literature, pretending a
+gourmet’s interest for her first attempt at something beyond the
+ordinary, but never relished any the less her unvarying famous kale and
+simple entremets, keeping his highest praise for her remarkable
+breakfasts.  “I don’t know whether you’re improving or whether I am
+getting used to it,” he would say, “but that’s fish! if you please, Miss
+Bell.”
+
+“Try another scone, Dan,” she would urge, to hide the confusion that his
+praise created.  “I’m sure you’re hungry.”
+
+“No, not hungry,” would he reply, “but, thank Providence, I’m greedy—pass
+the plate.”
+
+Bell was busy at her cookery lesson, making her cuttings fill the part of
+the book that was still to buy, doing all she could to make Bud see how
+noble was a proper crimpy paste, though her lesson was cunningly designed
+to look like one for Kate alone.  Her sleeves were rolled up, and the
+flour was flying, when a rat-tat came to the door.  They looked up from
+their entrancing occupation, and there, in front, was the castle
+carriage!
+
+Miss Bell made moan.  “Mercy on us!  That’ll be Lady Anne, and Ailie out,
+and I cannot go to speak to anybody, for I’m such a ticket.  Run to the
+door, dear, and take her into the parlour, and keep her there till I am
+ready.  Don’t forget to say ‘My Lady,’—No, don’t say ‘My Lady,’ for the
+Dyces are of old, and as good as their neighbours, but say ‘Your
+Ladyship’; not too often, but only now and then, to let her see you know
+it.”
+
+Bud went to the door and let in Lady Anne, leading her composedly to the
+parlour.
+
+“Aunt Ailie’s out,” she said, “and Aunt Bell is _such_ a ticket.  But
+she’s coming in a minute, your—your—your—”  Bud paused for a second, a
+little put about.  “I forget which it was I was to say.  It was either
+‘Your Ladyship’ or ‘My Lady.’  You’re not my lady, really, and you’re not
+your own, hardly, seeing you’re promised to Colonel George.  Please tell
+me which is right, Lady Anne.”
+
+“Who told you it was Colonel George, my dear?” asked Lady Anne, sitting
+down on the proffered chair and putting her arms around the child.
+
+“Oh, it’s just the clash of the parish,” said my little Scot who once was
+Yankee.  “And everybody’s so glad.”
+
+“Are they, indeed?” said Lady Anne, blushing in her pleasure.  “That is
+exceedingly kind of them.  I always thought our own people the nicest and
+kindest in the world.”
+
+“That’s just it!” said Bud cheerfully.  “Everybody everywhere is just
+what one is oneself,—so Aunt Ailie says; and I s’pose it’s because
+you’re—  Oh! I was going to say something about you, but I’ll let you
+guess.  What lovely weather!  I hope your papa is well?  And Mr Jones?”
+
+“Thank you; papa is very well indeed,” said Lady Anne.  “And Mr Jones—”
+She hung upon the name with some dubiety.
+
+“The coachman, you know,” said Bud placidly.  “He’s a perfectly lovely
+man: so fat and smiley.  He smiles so much his face is all in gathers.
+So kind to his horses too, and waves his whip at me every time he passes.
+Once he gave me a ride on the dickey: it was gorgeous.  Do you often get
+a ride on the dickey, Lady Anne?”
+
+“Never!” said Lady Anne, with a clever little sigh.  “Many a time I have
+wished I could get one, but they always kept me inside the carriage.  I
+don’t seem to have had much luck all my life till—till—till lately.”
+
+“Did Mr Jones never take you on his knee and tell you the story of the
+Welsh giants?”
+
+“No,” said Lady Anne, solemnly shaking her head.
+
+“Then you’re too big now.  What a pity!  Seems to me there isn’t such a
+much in being a big L Lady after all.  I thought you’d have everything of
+the very best.  You have no idea what funny ideas we had in America about
+dukes and lords and ladies in the old country.  Why, I expected I’d be
+bound to hate them when I got here, because they’d be so proud and
+haughty and tyrannical.  But I don’t hate them one little bit; they don’t
+do anybody any harm more’n if they were knockabout artistes.  I suppose
+the Queen herself ’d not crowd a body off the sidewalk if you met her
+there.  She’d be just as apt to say ‘What ho! little girl.  Pip! pip!’
+and smile, for Auntie Bell is always reading in the newspapers snappy
+little pars. about the nice things the Royal family do, just the same as
+if they weren’t royal a bit.”
+
+“Yes, I sometimes see those touching domestic incidents,” said her
+ladyship.  “You mean such things as the Prince helping the cripple boy to
+find his crutch?  They make me almost cry.”
+
+“I wouldn’t wet a lash, if I were you,” said Bud.  “That’s just the
+Press: like as not there’s nothing behind it but the agent in advance.”
+
+“Agent in advance?” said Lady Anne, perplexed.
+
+“Yes.  He’s bound to boom the show somehow: so Jim Molyneux said, and he
+knew most things, did Jim.”
+
+“You wicked Republican!” cried her ladyship, hugging the child the closer
+to her.
+
+“I’m not a Republican,” protested Bud.  “I’m truly Scotch, same as father
+was, and Auntie Bell is—that’s good enough for me.  I’d just _love_ to be
+a My Lady myself, it must be so nice and—and fairy.  Why! it’s about the
+only fairy thing left anywhere, I guess.  There’s nothing really to it;
+it’s not being richer nor powerfuller nor more tyrannical than anybody
+else, but it’s—it’s—it’s—  I dunno ’zactly what it is, but it’s
+something—it—it’s romantic, that’s what it is, to be a King, or a Duke,
+or a My Lady.  The fun of it is all inside you, like poetry.  I hope, My
+Lady Anne, you ’preciate your privileges!  You must ’preciate your
+privileges always, Auntie Bell says, and praise the Lord without ceasing,
+and have a thankful heart.”
+
+“I assure you I do,” replied her ladyship.
+
+“That’s right,” said Bud encouragingly.  “It’s simply splendid to be a
+really Lady with a big L without having to play it to yourself.  I’ve
+been one as Winifred Wallace quite often; with Auntie Ailie’s fur jacket
+and picture-hat on I’d sit and sit, and feel so composed and grand in the
+rocker, and let on it was Mr Jones’s carriage, and bow sweetly to Footles
+who’d be a poor man passing to his work, and mighty proud to have me
+notice him.  I’d be sort of haughty, but not ’bominable haughty, ’cause
+Auntie Bell says there’s nothing beats a humble and a contrite heart.
+But then you see something would happen to spoil everything; Kate would
+laugh, or Auntie Bell would pop in and cry ‘Mercy on me, child,
+play-acting again!  Put away that jacket instantly.’  Then I’d know I was
+only letting on to be a really Lady; but with you it’s different—all the
+time you’re It.  Auntie Bell says so, and she knows everything.”
+
+“It really looks as if she did,” said her ladyship, “for I’ve called to
+see her to-day about a sailor.”
+
+“A sailor!” Bud exclaimed, with wild surmise.
+
+“Yes.  He wants to be captain of my yacht, and he refers me to Miss Dyce,
+for all the world as if he were a housemaid.”
+
+“I’m _so_ glad,” cried Bud.  “For it was I who advised him to, and
+I’m—I’m the referee.”
+
+“You!”
+
+“Yes; it was Kate’s letter, and she—and we—and I said there was a rumour
+you wanted a captain, and he should apply, saying if you wanted to know
+just what a clean, good, brave sailor he was you should ask Kate MacNeill
+or Miss Dyce, and I’m the Miss Dyce this time, and you’re—why, you’re
+really visiting me!”
+
+Lady Anne laughed.  “Really, Miss Lennox,” she said, “you’re a wonderful
+diplomatist.  I must get the Earl to put you in the service.  I believe
+there’s a pretty decent salary goes to our representative in the United
+States.”
+
+“But don’t laugh at me, Lady Anne,” pleaded Bud earnestly.  “I’m dre’ffle
+set on having Charles off the cargo boats, where he’s thrown away.  You
+don’t know how Kate loves him, and she hasn’t seen him—not for years and
+years.  You know yourself what it is to be so far away from anybody you
+love.  He’d just fit your yacht like a glove—he’s so educated, having
+been on the yachts and with the gentry round the world.  He’s got
+everything nice about him you’d look for in a sailor—big brown eyes so
+beautiful there’s only Gaelic words I don’t know, but that sound like
+somebody breaking glass, to describe how sweet they are.  And the whitest
+teeth!  When he walks, he walks so straight and hits the ground so hard
+you’d think he owned the land.”
+
+“It seems to me,” said Lady Anne, “that you couldn’t be more enthusiastic
+about your _protégé_ if you loved him yourself.”
+
+“So I do,” said Bud, with the utmost frankness.  “But there’s really
+nothing between us.  He’s meant for Kate.  She’s got heaps of beaux, but
+he’s her steady.  I gave him up to her for good on Hallowe’en, and she’s
+so happy.”
+
+Bell had thrown off her cooking-apron and cleaned her hands, and ran up
+the stairs to see that her hair was trim, for though she loved a Lady for
+the sake of Scotland’s history, she someway felt in the presence of Lady
+Anne the awe she had as a child for Barbara Mushet.  That Ailie in such
+company should be, on the other hand, so composed, and sometimes even
+comical, was a marvel she never could get over.  “I never feared the face
+of earl or man,” she would say, “but I’m scared for a titled lady.”
+
+When she came down to the parlour the visitor was rising to go.
+
+“Oh, Miss Dyce,” said she, “I’m so glad to see you, though my visit this
+time’s really to Miss Lennox.  I wished to consult her about a captain
+for my little yacht.”
+
+“Miss Lennox!” exclaimed Miss Bell, shaking hands, and with a look of
+apprehension at her amazing niece.
+
+“Yes,” said Lady Anne; “she has recommended a man who seems in all
+respects quite suitable, if he happens to know a little about sailing;
+and I’m going to write to him to come and see me.”
+
+At that, I must confess it, Lennox for once forgot her manners and darted
+from the parlour to tell Kate the glorious news.
+
+“Kate, you randy!” she cried, bursting into the kitchen—
+
+   “‘I sent a letter to my love and by the way I dropped it,
+   I dropped it, I dropped it; I dree—I dree—I dropped it’—
+
+“I’ve fixed it up for Charles; he’s to be the captain.”  The servant
+danced on the floor in a speechless transport, and Bud danced too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+TOO slow, far too slow, passed the lengthening days.  Kate was bedded by
+nine to make them shorter by an hour or two, but what she took from the
+foot of the day she tacked to the head of it, as Paddy in the story eked
+his blanket, and she was up in the mornings long before Wanton Wully rang
+the six-hours’ bell.  The elder Dyces—saving Ailie, who knew all about
+it, hearing it from Bud in passionate whispers as they lay together in
+one bed in the brightening morns of May—might think summer’s coming was
+what made the household glad, Kate sing like the laverock, and Lennox so
+happy and so good, but it was the thought of Charles.  “Dear me! you’ve
+surely taken a desperate fancy for Prince Charlie songs,” would Miss Bell
+remark to Bud and the maid of Colonsay.  “Is there not another ditty in
+the ballant?” and they would glance at each other guiltily but never let
+on.
+
+   “Come o’er the stream, Charlie, dear Charlie, brave Charlie,
+      Come o’er the stream, Charlie, and I’ll be Maclean.”
+
+—Bud composed that one in a jiffy sitting one day at the kitchen window,
+and of all the noble Jacobite measures Kate liked it best, “it was so
+clever, and so desperate like the thing!”  Such a daft disease is love!
+To the woman whose recollection of the mariner was got from olden Sabbath
+walks ’tween churches in the windy isle, among the mossy tombs, and to
+Bud, who had never seen him, but had made for herself a portrait blent of
+the youth so gay and gallant Kate described, and of George Sibley Purser,
+and of dark ear-ringed men of the sea that in “The Tempest” cry “Heigh,
+my hearts! cheerily, cheerily, cheerily, my hearts! yare, yare,” the
+prospect of his presence was a giddy joy.
+
+And after all the rascal came without warning, to be for a day and a
+night within sound of Kate’s minstrelsy without her knowing it, for he
+lodged, an ardent but uncertain man, on the other side of the
+garden-wall, little thinking himself the cause and object of these
+musical mornings.  Bud found him out—that clever one! who was surely come
+from America to set all the Old World right,—she found him at the
+launching of the _Wave_.
+
+Lady Anne’s yacht dozed like a hedgehog under leaves through the winter
+months below the beeches on what we call the hard—on the bank of the
+river under Jocka’s house, where the water’s brackish, and the launching
+of her was always of the nature of a festival, for the Earl’s men were
+there, John Taggart’s band, with “A life on the Ocean Wave” between each
+passage of the jar of old Tom Watson’s home-made ale—not tipsy lads but
+jovial, and even the children of the schools, for it happened on a
+Saturday.
+
+Bud and Footles went with each other and the rest of the bairns, unknown
+to their people, for in adventures such as these the child delighted, and
+was wisely never interdicted.
+
+The man who directed the launch was a stranger in a foreign-looking soft
+slouch hat—Charles plain to identify in every feature, in the big brown
+searching eyes that only Gaelic could do justice to, and his walk so
+steeve and steady, his lovely beard, his tread on the hard as if he owned
+the land, his voice on the deck as if he were the master of the sea.  She
+stood apart and watched him, fascinated, and could not leave even when
+the work was done and the band was home-returning, charming the road
+round the bay with “Peggy Baxter’s Quickstep.”  He saw her lingering,
+smiled on her, and beckoned on her to cross the gangway that led to the
+yacht from the little jetty.
+
+“Well, wee lady,” said he, with one big hand on her head and another on
+the dog, “is this the first of my crew at a quay-head jump?  Sign on at
+once and I’ll make a sailor of you.”
+
+“Oh, please,” said she, looking up in his face, too anxious to enter into
+his humour, “are you our Kate’s Charles?”
+
+“Kate!” said he, reflecting, with a hand in his beard, through which his
+white teeth shone.  “There’s such a wheen of Kates here and there, and
+all of them fine, fine gyurls!  Still-and-on, if yours is like most of
+her name that I’m acquaint with, I’m the very man for her; and my name,
+indeed, is what you might be calling Charles.  In fact,”—in a burst of
+confidence, seating himself on a water-breaker,—“my Christian name is
+Charles—Charlie, for short among the gentry.  You are not speaking, by
+any chance, of one called Kate MacNeill?” he added, showing some red in
+the tan of his countenance.
+
+“Of course I am,” said Bud reproachfully.  “Oh, men! men!  As if there
+could be any other!  I hope to goodness you love her same as you said you
+did, and haven’t been—been carrying-on with any other Kates for a
+diversion.  I’m Lennox Dyce.  Your Kate stays with me and Uncle Dan, and
+Auntie Bell, and Auntie Ailie, and this sweet little dog by the name of
+Footles.  She’s so jolly!  My! won’t she be tickled to know you’ve come?
+And—and how’s the world, Captain Charles?”
+
+“The world?” he said, aback, looking at her curiously as she seated
+herself beside him on a hatch.
+
+“Yes, the world, you know—the places you were in,” with a wave of the
+hand that seemed to mean the universe.
+
+   “‘Edinburgh, Leith,
+   Portobello, Musselburgh, and Dalkeith?’
+
+—No, that’s Kate’s favourite geography lesson, ’cause she can sing it.  I
+mean Rotterdam, and Santander, and Bilbao—all the lovely places on the
+map where a letter takes four days and a twopence-ha’penny stamp, and’s
+mighty apt to smell of rope.”
+
+“Oh, them!” said he, with the warmth of recollection, “they’re not so
+bad—in fact, they’re just A1.  It’s the like of there you see life and
+spend the money.”
+
+“Have you been in Italy?” asked Bud.  “I’d love to see that old Italy—for
+the sake of Romeo and Juliet, you know, and my dear, dear Portia.”
+
+“_I_ know,” said Charles.  “Allow me!  Perfect beauties, all fine, fine
+gyurls; but I don’t think very much of dagoes.  I have slept in their
+sailors’ homes, and never hear Italy mentioned but I feel I want to
+scratch myself.”
+
+“Dagoes!” cried Bud; “that’s what Jim called them.  Have you been in
+America?”
+
+“Have I been in America?  I should think I have,” said he emphatically,
+“The Lakes.  It’s yonder you get value—two dollars a-day and everywhere
+respected like a perfect gentleman.  Men’s not mice out yonder in
+America.”
+
+“Then you maybe have been in Chicago?” cried Bud, her face filled with a
+happy expectation as she pressed the dog in her arms till its fringe
+mixed with her own wild curls.
+
+“Chicago?” said the Captain.  “Allow me!  Many a time.  You’ll maybe not
+believe it, but it was there I bought this hat.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Bud, with the tears in her eyes and speechless for a moment,
+“I—I—could just hug that hat.  Won’t you please let me—let me pat it?’
+
+“Pat away,” said Captain Charles, laughing, and took it off with the
+sweep of a cavalier that was in itself a compliment.  “You know yon
+place—Chicago?” he asked, as she patted his headgear fondly and returned
+it to him.  For a little her mind was far away from the deck of Lady
+Anne’s yacht, her eyes on the ripple of the tide, her nostrils full, and
+her little bosom heaving.
+
+“You were there?” he asked again.
+
+“Chicago’s where I lived,” she said.  “That was mother’s place,” and into
+his ear she poured a sudden flood of reminiscence—of her father and
+mother, and the travelling days and lodging-houses, and Mr and Mrs
+Molyneux, and the graves in the far-off cemetery.  The very thought of
+them all made her again American in accent and in phrase.  He listened,
+understanding, feeling the vexation of that far-sundering by the sea as
+only a sailor can, and clapped her on the shoulder, and looking at him
+she saw that in his eyes which made her love him more than ever.
+
+“Oh my!” she said bravely, “here I’m talking away to you about myself,
+and I’m no more account than a rabbit under these present circumstances,
+Captain Charles, and all the time you’re just pining to know all about
+your Kate.”
+
+The Captain tugged his beard and reddened again.  “A fine, fine gyurl!”
+said he.  “I hope—I hope she’s pretty well.”
+
+“She’s fine,” said Bud, nodding her head gravely.  “You bet Kate can walk
+now without taking hold.  Why, there’s never anything wrong with her
+’cepting now and then the croodles, and they’re not anything lingering.”
+
+“There was a kind of a rumour that she was at times a trifle delicate,”
+said Charles.  “In fact, it was herself who told me, in her letters.”
+
+Bud blushed.  This was one of the few details of her correspondence on
+which she and Kate had differed.  It had been her idea that an invalidish
+hint at intervals produced a nice and tender solicitude in the roving
+sailor, and she had, at times, credited the maid with some of Mrs
+Molyneux’s old complaints, a little modified and more romantic, though
+Kate herself maintained that illness in a woman under eighty was looked
+upon as anything but natural or interesting in Colonsay.
+
+“It was nothing but—but love,” she said now, confronted with the
+consequence of her imaginative cunning.  “You know what love is, Captain
+Charles?  A powerfully weakening thing, though I don’t think it would
+hurt anybody if they wouldn’t take it so much to heart.”
+
+“I’m glad to hear it’s only—only what you mention,” said Charles, much
+relieved.  “I thought it might be something inward, and that maybe she
+was working too hard at her education.”
+
+“Oh, she’s not taking her education so bad as all that,” Bud assured him.
+“She isn’t wasting to a shadow sitting up nights with a wet towel on her
+head soaking in the poets and figuring sums.  All she wanted was to be
+sort of middling smart, but nothing gaudy.”
+
+Captain Charles looked sideway keenly at the child as she sat beside him,
+half afraid himself of the irony he had experienced among her countrymen,
+but saw it was not here.  Indeed it never was in Lennox Dyce, for all her
+days she had the sweet engaging self-unconsciousness no training can
+command; frankness, fearlessness, and respect for all her fellows—the
+gifts that will never fail to make the proper friends.  She talked so
+composedly that he was compelled to frankness himself on a subject no
+money could have made him speak about to any one a week ago.
+
+“Between you and me and the mast,” said he, “I’m feared Kate has got far
+too clever for the like of me, and that’s the way I have not called on
+her.”
+
+“Then you’d best look pretty spry,” said Bud, pointing a monitory finger
+at him; “for there’s beaux all over the place that’s wearing their Sunday
+clothes week-days, and washing their faces night and morning, hankering
+to tag on to her, and she’ll maybe tire of standing out in the cold for
+you.  I wouldn’t be skeered, Cap’, if I was you; she’s not too clever for
+or’nary use; she’s nicer than ever she was that time you used to walk
+with her in Colonsay.”  Bud was beginning to be alarmed at the misgivings
+to which her own imaginings had given rise.
+
+“If you saw her letters,” said Charles gloomily.  “Poetry and foreign
+princes.  One of them great at the dancing!  He kissed her hand.  He
+would never have ventured a thing like that if she hadn’t given him
+encouragement.”
+
+“Just diversion,” said Bud consolingly.  “She was only—she was only
+putting by the time; and she often says she’ll only marry for her own
+conveniency, and the man for her is—well, _you_ know, Captain Charles.”
+
+“There was a Russian army officer,” proceeded the seaman, still suffering
+a jealous doubt.
+
+“But he’s dead.  He’s deader ’n canned beans.  Mr Wanton gied him—gied
+him the BAGGONET.  There wasn’t really anything in it anyway.  Kate
+didn’t care for him the tiniest bit, and I guess it was a great relief.”
+
+“Then she’s learning the piano,” said the Captain; “that’s not like a
+working gyurl.  And she talked in one of her letters about sitting on
+Uncle Dan’s knee.”
+
+Bud dropped the dog at her feet and burst into laughter: in that instance
+she had certainly badly jumbled the identities.
+
+“It’s nothing to laugh at,” said the Captain, tugging his beard.  “It’s
+not at all becoming in a decent gyurl; and it’s not like the Kate I knew
+in Colonsay.”
+
+Bud saw the time had come for a full confession.
+
+“Captain Charles,” she said, when she recovered herself, “it—it wasn’t
+Kate said that at all; it was another girl called Winifred Wallace.  You
+see, Kate is always so busy doing useful things—_such_ soup! and—and a
+washing every Monday, and taking her education, and the pens were all so
+dev—so—so stupid, that she simply had to get some one to help her write
+those letters; and that’s why Winifred Wallace gave a hand and messed
+things up a bit, I guess.  Where the letters talked solemn sense about
+the weather and the bad fishing and bits about Oronsay, and where they
+told you to be sure and change your stockings when you came downstairs
+from the mast, out the wet, and where they said you were the very, very
+one she loved, that was Kate; but when there was a lot of dinky talk
+about princes and Russian army officers and slabs of poetry, that was
+just Winifred Wallace putting on lugs and showing off.  No, it wasn’t all
+showing off; it was because she kind of loved you herself.  You see she
+didn’t have any beau of her own, Mr Charles; and—and she thought it
+wouldn’t be depriving Kate of anything to pretend, for Kate said there
+was no depravity in it.”
+
+“Who’s Winifred Wallace?” asked the surprised sailor.
+
+“I’m all the Winifred Wallace there is,” said Bud penitently.  “It’s my
+poetry name,—it’s my other me.  I can do a heap of things when I’m
+Winifred I can’t do when I’m plain Bud, or else I’d laugh at myself
+enough to hurt, I’m so mad.  Are you angry, Mr Charles?”
+
+“Och! just Charles to you,” said the sailor.  “Never heed the honours.
+I’m not angry a bit.  Allow me!  In fact, I’m glad to find the prince and
+the piano and the poetry were all nonsense.”
+
+“I thought that poetry pretty middling myself,” admitted Bud, but in a
+hesitating way that made him look very guilty.
+
+“The poetry,” said he quickly, “was splendid.  There was nothing wrong
+with it that I could see; but I’m glad it wasn’t Kate’s—for she’s a fine,
+fine gyurl, and brought up most respectable.”
+
+“Yes,” said Bud; “she’s better ’n any poetry.  You must feel gay because
+you are going to marry her.”
+
+“I’m not so sure of her marrying me.  She maybe wouldn’t have me.”
+
+“But she can’t help it!” cried Bud.  “She’s bound to, for the witch-lady
+fixed it on Hallowe’en.  Only, I hope you won’t marry her for years and
+years.  Why, Auntie Bell ’d go crazy if you took away our Kate; for good
+girls ain’t so easy to get nowadays as they used to be when they had
+three pound ten in the half-year, and nailed their trunks down to the
+floor of a new place when they got it, for fear they might be bounced.
+I’d be vexed I helped do anything if you married her for a long while.
+Besides, you’d be sorry yourself, for her education is not quite done;
+she’s only up to Compound Multiplication and the Tudor Kings.  You’d just
+be sick sorry.”
+
+“Would I?”
+
+“Course you would!  That’s love.  Before one marries it’s hunkydory—it’s
+fairy all the time; but after that it’s the same old face at breakfast,
+Mr Cleland says, and simply putting up with one another.  Oh, love’s a
+wonderful thing, Charles; it’s the Great Thing, but sometimes I say ‘Give
+me Uncle Dan!’  Promise you’ll not go marrying Kate right off.”
+
+The sailor roared with laughter.  “Lord!” said he, “if I wait too long
+I’ll be wanting to marry yourself, for you’re a dangerous gyurl.”
+
+“But I’m never going to marry,” said Bud.  “I want to go right on loving
+everybody, and don’t yearn for any particular man tagging on to me.”
+
+“I never heard so much about love in English all my life,” said Charles,
+“though it’s common enough and quite respectable in Gaelic.  Do you—do
+you love myself?”
+
+“Course I do!” said Bud, cuddling Footles.
+
+“Then,” said he firmly, “the sooner I sign on with Kate the better, for
+you’re a dangerous gyurl.”
+
+So they went down the road together, planning ways of early
+foregatherings with Kate, and you may be sure Bud’s way was cunningest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+WHEN Kate that afternoon was told her hour was come, and that to-morrow
+she must meet her destined mariner, she fell into a chair, threw her
+apron over her head, and cried and laughed horribly turn about—the victim
+of hysteria that was half from fear and half from a bliss too deep and
+unexpected.
+
+“Mercy on me!” she exclaimed.  “Now he’ll find out everything, and what a
+stupid one I am.  All my education’s clean gone out of my head; I’m sure
+I couldn’t spell an article.  I canna even mind the ninth commandment,
+let alone the Reasons Annexed; and as for grammar, whether it’s ‘Give the
+book to Bud and me’ or ‘Give the book to Bud and I,’ is more than I could
+tell you if my very life depended on it.  Oh, Lennox! now we’re going to
+catch it!  Are you certain sure he said to-morrow?”
+
+Bud gazed at her disdainfully and stamped her foot.  “Stop that, Kate
+MacNeill!” she commanded.  “You mustn’t act so silly.  He’s as skeered of
+you as you can be of him.  He’d have been here Friday before the morning
+milk if he didn’t think you’d be the sort to back him into a corner and
+ask him questions about ancient Greece and Rome.  Seems to me love makes
+some folk idiotic; lands sake! I’m mighty glad it always leaves me calm
+as a plate of pumpkin pie.”
+
+“Is—is—he looking tremendously genteel and well-put-on?” asked the maid
+of Colonsay, with anxious lines on her forehead.  “Is he—is he as nice as
+I said he was?”
+
+“He was everything you said—except the Gaelic.  I knew he couldn’t be so
+bad as that sounded that you said about his eyes.  I—I never saw a more
+becoming man.  If I had known just how noble he looked, I’d have sent him
+stacks of poetry,” whereat Kate moaned again, rocked herself in her chair
+most piteously, and swore she could never have the impudence to see him
+till she had her new frock from the dressmakers.
+
+“He’ll be thinking I’m refined and quite the lady,” she said, “and I’m
+just the same plain Kate I was in Colonsay, and him a regular Captain!
+It was all your fault, with your fancy letters.  Oh, Lennox Dyce, I think
+I hate you, just: lend me your hanky,—mine’s all wet with greeting.”
+
+“If you weren’t so big and temper wasn’t sinful, I’d shake you!” said
+Bud, producing her handkerchief.  “You were just on your last legs for a
+sailor, and you’d never have put a hand on one if I didn’t write these
+letters.  And now, when the sweetest sailor in the land is brought to
+your doorstep, you don’t ’preciate your privileges and have a grateful
+heart, but turn round and yelp at me.  I tell you, Kate MacNeill, sailors
+are mighty scarce and sassy in a little place like this, and none too
+easy picked up, and ’stead of sitting there, with a smut on your nose and
+tide-marks on your eyebrows, mourning, you’d best arise and shine, or
+somebody with their wits about them ’ll snap him up.  I’d do it myself if
+it wouldn’t be not honourable to you.”
+
+“Oh! if I just had another week or two’s geography!” said Kate dolefully.
+
+Bud had to laugh—she could not help herself; and the more she laughed,
+the more tragic grew the servant’s face.
+
+“Seems to me,” said Bud, “that I’ve got to run this loving business all
+along the line: you don’t know the least thing about it after g-o, go.
+Why, Kate, I’m telling you Charles is afraid of you more than you are of
+him.  He thought you’d be that educated you’d wear specs, and stand quite
+stiff talking poetry all the time, and I had to tell him every dinky bit
+in these letters were written by me.”
+
+“Then that’s worse!” cried the servant, more distressed than ever.  “For
+he’ll think I canna write myself, and I can write like fury if you only
+give me a decent pen, and shut the door, and don’t bother me.”
+
+“No fears!” said Bud; “I made that all right.  I said you were too busy
+housekeeping, and I guess it’s more a housekeeper than a school-ma’rm
+Charles needs.  Anyhow, he’s so much in love with you, he’d marry you if
+you were only half-way through the Twopenny.  He’s plump head over heels,
+and it’s up to you, as a sensible girl, not to conceal that you like him
+some yourself.”
+
+“I’ll not know what to say to him,” said Kate, “and he always was so
+clever: half the time I couldna understand him if it wasn’t for his
+eyes.”
+
+“Well, he’ll know what to say to you, I guess, if all the signs are
+right.  Charles is not so shy as all that,—love-making is where he lives;
+and he made goo-goo eyes at myself without an introduction.  You’d fancy,
+to hear you, he was a school inspector, and he’s only just an or’nary
+lover thinking of the happy days you used to have in Colonsay.  If I was
+you I’d not let on I was anything but what I really was; I’d be
+natural—yes, that’s what I’d be, for being natural’s the deadliest thing
+below the canopy to make folk love you.  Don’t pretend, but just be the
+same Kate MacNeill to him you are to me.  Just you listen to him, and now
+and then look at him, and don’t think of a darned thing—I mean, don’t
+think of a blessed thing but how nice he is, and he’ll be so pleased and
+so content he’ll not even ask you to spell cat”
+
+“Content!” cried Kate, with conviction.  “Not him!  Fine I ken him!
+He’ll want to kiss me, as sure as God’s in heaven,—beg your pardon.”
+
+“I expect that’s not a thing you should say to me,” said Bud, blushing
+deeply.
+
+“But I begged your pardon,” said the maid.
+
+“I don’t mean that about God in heaven, that’s right—so He is, or where
+would _we_ be? what I meant was about the kissing.  I’m old enough for
+love, but I’m not old enough for you to be talking to me about kissing.
+I guess Auntie Ailie wouldn’t like to have you talk to me about a thing
+like that, and Auntie Bell, she’d be furious—it’s too advanced.”
+
+“What time am I to see him?” asked Kate.
+
+“In the morning.  If you go out to the garden just after breakfast, and
+whistle, he’ll look over the wall.”
+
+“The morning!” cried the maid aghast.  “I couldn’t face him in the
+morning.  Who ever heard of such a thing?  Now you have gone away and
+spoiled everything!  I could hardly have all my wits about me even if it
+was only gloaming.”
+
+Bud sighed despairingly.  “Oh, you don’t understand, Kate,” said she.
+“He wanted it to be the evening, too, but I said you weren’t a miserable
+pair of owls, and the best time for anything is the morning.  Uncle Dan
+says the first half-hour in the morning is worth three hours at any other
+time of the day, for when you’ve said your prayers, and had a good bath,
+and a clean shave, and your boots new on—no slippers nor slithery
+dressing-gowns, the peace of God, and—and—and the assurance of strength
+and righteousness descends upon you so that you—you—you can tackle
+wild-cats.  I feel so brash and brave myself in the morning I could skip
+the hills like a goat.  It’s simply got to be the morning, Kate MacNeill.
+That’s when you look your very best, if you care to take a little
+trouble, and don’t simply just slouch through, and I’m set on having you
+see him first time over the garden wall.  That’s the only way to fix the
+thing up romantic, seeing we haven’t any balcony.  You’ll go out and
+stand against the blossom of the cherry-tree, and hold a basket of
+flowers and parsley, and when he peeks over and sees you looming out in
+the picture, I tell you he’ll be tickled to death.  That’s the way
+Shakespeare ’d fix it, and he knew.”
+
+“I don’t think much of Shakespeare,” said Kate.  “Fancy yon Igoa!”
+
+“Iago, you mean; well, what about him?”
+
+“The wickedness of him; such a lot of lies!”
+
+“Pooh!” said Bud.  “He was only for the effect.  Of course there never
+really was such a mean wicked man as that Iago,—there couldn’t be; but
+Shakespeare made him just so’s you’d like the nice folk all the more by
+thinking what they might have been if God had let Himself go.”
+
+That night Kate was abed by eight.  Vainly the town cried for her—the
+cheerful passage of feet on the pavement, and a tinkler piper at the
+Cross, and she knew how bright was the street, with the late-lit windows
+of the shops, and how intoxicating was the atmosphere of Saturday in the
+dark; but having said her Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic, and “Now I lay me down
+to sleep” in English, she covered her head with the blankets and thought
+of the coming day with joy and apprehension, until she fell asleep.
+
+In the morning Miss Bell had no sooner gone up to the making of beds,
+that was her Sabbath care to save the servant-maid from too much sin, and
+Ailie to her weekly reading with the invalid Duncan Gill, than Bud flew
+into the kitchen to make Kate ready for her tryst.  Never in this world
+were breakfast dishes sooner cleaned and dried than by that eager pair:
+no sooner were they done than Kate had her chest-lid up and had dived,
+head foremost, among her Sunday finery.
+
+“What’s that?” asked Bud.  “You’re not going to put on glad rags, are
+you?”  For out there came a blue gown, fondled tenderly.
+
+“Of course I am,” said Kate.  “It’s either that or my print for it, and a
+print wrapper would not be the thing at all to meet—meet the Captain in;
+he’ll be expecting me to be truly refined.”
+
+“I think he’d like the wrapper better,” said Bud gravely.  “The blue
+gown’s very nice—but it’s not Kate, somehow: do you know, I think it’s
+Auntie Ailie up to the waist, and the banker’s cook in the lacey bits
+above that, and it don’t make you refined a bit.  It’s not what you put
+on that makes you refined, it’s things you can’t take off.  You have no
+idea how sweet you look in that print, Kate, with your cap and apron.
+You look better in them than if you wore the latest yell of fashion.  I’d
+want to marry you myself if I was a captain, and saw you dressed like
+that; but if you had on your Sunday gown I’d—I’d bite my lip and go home
+and ask advice from mother.”
+
+Kate put past the blue gown, not very willingly, but she had learned by
+now that in some things Bud had better judgment than herself.  She washed
+and dried her face till it shone like a polished apple, put on Bud’s
+choice of a cap and streamered apron, and was about to take a generous
+dash of Florida Water when she found her hand restrained.
+
+“I’d have no scent,” said Bud.  “I like scent myself, some, and I just
+dote on our Florida Water, but Auntie Ailie says the scent of clean
+water, sun, and air, is the sweetest a body can have about one, and any
+other kind’s as rude as Keating’s Powder.”
+
+“He’ll be expecting the Florida Water,” said Kate, “seeing it was himself
+that sent it.”
+
+“It don’t amount to a hill of beans,” said Bud; “you can wear our locket,
+and that’ll please him.”
+
+Kate went with a palpitating heart through the scullery, out into the
+garden, with a basket in her hand, a pleasing and expansive figure.  Bud
+would have liked to watch her, but a sense of delicacy prevented, and she
+stood at the kitchen window looking resolutely into the street.  On his
+way down the stairs Mr Dyce was humming the Hundredth Psalm; outside the
+shops were shuttered, and the harmony of the morning hymn came from the
+baker’s open windows.  A few folk passed in their Sunday clothes, at a
+deliberate pace, to differentiate it from the secular hurry of other
+days.  Soon the church bell would ring for the Sabbath-school, and Bud
+must be ready.  Remembering it, a sense of some impiety took possession
+of her—worldly trysts in back gardens on the Sabbath were not what Aunt
+Bell would much approve of.  Had they met yet?  How did Charles look?
+What did Kate say?
+
+“Mercy on me!” cried the maid, bursting in through the scullery.  “Did
+you say I was to whistle!”
+
+“Of course,” said Bud, and then looked horrified.  “Oh, Kate,” said she
+in a whisper, “I was so keen on the vain things of this wicked world I
+quite forgot it was the Lord’s Day; of course you can’t go whistling on
+Sunday.”
+
+“That’s what I was just thinking to myself,” said the maid, not very
+heartily.  “But I thought I would ask you.  It wouldn’t need to be a
+tune, but—but of course it would be awful wicked—forbye Miss Dyce would
+be sure to hear me, and she’s that particular.”
+
+“No, you can’t whistle—you daren’t,” said Bud.  “It’d be dre’ffle wicked.
+But how’d it do to throw a stone?  Not a rock, you know, but a nice
+little quiet wee white Sunday pebble?  You might like as not be throwing
+it at Rodger’s cats, and that would be a work of necessity and mercy, for
+these cruel cats are just death on birds.”
+
+“But there’s not a single cat there,” explained the maid.
+
+“Never mind,” said Bud.  “You can heave the pebble over the wall so that
+it’ll be a warning to them not to come poaching in our garden; there’s
+sure to be some on the other side just about to get on the wall, and if
+Charles happens to be there too, can you help that?” and Kate retired
+again.
+
+There was a pause, and then a sound of laughter.  For ten minutes Bud
+waited in an agony of curiosity, that was at last too much for her, and
+she ventured to look out at the scullery window—to see Charles chasing
+his adored one down the walk, between the bleaching-green and the
+gooseberries.  Kate was making for the sanctuary of her kitchen, her face
+aflame, and all her streamers flying, but was caught before she entered.
+
+“I told you!” said she, as she came in panting.  “We hadn’t said twenty
+words when he wanted to kiss me.”
+
+“Why! was that the reason you ran?” asked Bud, astonished.
+
+“Ye—yes,” said the maid.
+
+“Seems to me it’s not very encouraging to Charles, then.”
+
+“Yes, but—but—I wasn’t running all my might,” said Kate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+TA-RAN-TA-RA!  Ta-ran-ta-ra!
+
+The world is coming for Lennox Dyce, the greedy world, youth’s first and
+worst beguiler, that promises so much, but at the best has only bubbles
+to give, which borrow a moment the splendour of the sun, then burst in
+the hands that grasp them; the world that will have only our bravest and
+most clever bairns, and takes them all from us one by one.  I have seen
+them go—scores of them, boys and girls, their foreheads high, and the sun
+on their faces, and never one came back.  Now and then returned to the
+burgh in the course of years a man or woman who bore a well-known name,
+and could recall old stories, but they were not the same, and even if
+they were not disillusioned, there was that in their flushed prosperity
+which ill made up for the bright young spirits quelled.
+
+Ta-ran-ta-ra!  Ta-ran-ta-ra!
+
+Yes, the world is coming, sure enough—on black and yellow wheels, with a
+guard red-coated who bugles through the glen.  It is coming behind black
+horses, with thundering hooves and foam-flecked harness, between bare
+hills, by gurgling burns and lime-washed shepherd dwellings, or in the
+shadow of the woods that simply stand where they are placed by God and
+wait.  It comes in a fur-collared coat—though it is autumn weather—and in
+a tall silk hat, and looks amused at the harmless country it has come to
+render discontent.
+
+Ta-ran-ta-ra!  Ta-ran-ta-ra!
+
+Go back, world go back, and leave the little lass among her dreams, with
+hearts that love and cherish.  Go back, with your false flowers and your
+gems of paste.  Go back, world, that for every ecstasy exacts a pang!
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+There were three passengers on the coach—the man with the fur collar who
+sat on the box beside the driver, and the Misses Duff behind.  I am sorry
+now that once I thought to make you smile at the pigeon hens, for to-day
+I’m in more Christian humour and my heart warms to them, seeing them come
+safely home from their flight afar from their doo-cot, since they it was
+who taught me first to make these symbols on the paper, and at their
+worst they were but a little stupid, like the most of us at times, and
+always with the best intent.  They had been to Edinburgh; they had been
+gone two weeks—their first adventure in a dozen years.  Miss Jean was
+happy, bringing back with her a new crochet pattern, a book of Views, a
+tooth gold-filled (she was so proud and spoke of it so often that it is
+not rude to mention it), and a glow of art she had got from an afternoon
+tea in a picture-gallery full of works in oil.  Amelia’s spoils were a
+phrase that lasted her for years—it was that Edinburgh was “redolent of
+Robert Louis,” the boast that she had heard the great MacCaskill preach,
+and got a lesson in the searing of harmless woods with heated pokers.
+Such are the rewards of travel: I have come home myself with as little
+for my time and money.
+
+But between them they had brought back something else—something to
+whisper about lest the man in front should hear, and two or three times
+to look at as it lay in an innocent roll beside the purse in Miss
+Amelia’s reticule.  It might have been a serpent in its coils, so timidly
+they glanced in at it, and snapped the bag shut with a kind of shudder.
+
+“At least it’s not a very large one,” whispered Miss Jean, with the old
+excuse of the unhappy lass who did the deadly sin.
+
+“No,” said her sister, “it may, indeed, be called quite—quite diminutive.
+The other he showed us was so horribly large and—and vulgar, the very
+look of it made me almost faint.  But, oh I wish we could have dispensed
+with the horrid necessity.  After twe—after so many years it looks like a
+confession of weakness.  I hope there will be no unpleasant talk about
+it.”
+
+“But you may be sure there will, Amelia Duff,” said her sister.  “They’ll
+cast up Barbara Mushet to us; she will always be the perfect teacher—”
+
+“The paragon of all the virtues.”
+
+“And it is such a gossiping place.”
+
+“Indeed it is,” said Miss Amelia.  “It is always redolent of—of scandal.”
+
+“I wish you had never thought of it,” said Miss Jean, with a sigh and a
+vicious little shake of the reticule.  “I am not blaming you, remember,
+’Melia; if we are doing wrong the blame of it is equally between us,
+except perhaps a little more for me, for I _did_ think the big one was
+better value for the money.  And yet it made me grue, it looked so—so
+dastardly.”
+
+“Jean,” said her sister solemnly, “if you had taken the big one, I would
+have marched out of the shop affronted.  If it made you grue, it made me
+shudder.  Even with the small one, did you notice how the man looked at
+us?  I thought he felt ashamed to be selling such a thing: perhaps he has
+a family.  He said they were not very often asked for.  I assure you I
+felt very small, the way he said it.”
+
+Once more they bent their douce brown hats together over the reticule and
+looked timidly in on the object of their shames and fears.  “Well, there
+it is, and it can’t be helped,” said Miss Jean at last, despairingly.
+“Let us hope and trust there will not be too frequent need for it, for, I
+assure you, I have neither the strength nor inclination.”  She snapped
+the bag shut again, and, glancing up, saw the man with the fur collar
+looking over his shoulder at them.
+
+“Strikes me, ladies,” he said, “the stage coach, as an easy mark for the
+highwaymen who used to permeate these parts, must have been a pretty
+merry proposition; they’d be apt to stub their toes on it if they came
+sauntering up behind.  John here”—with an inclination of his head towards
+the driver—“tells me he’s on schedule time, and I allow he’s making
+plenty fuss clicking his palate, but I feel I want to get out and heave
+rocks at his cattle, so’s they’d get a better gait on ’em.”
+
+Miss Jean was incapable of utterance; she was still too much afraid of a
+stranger who, though gallantly helping them to the top of the coach at
+Maryfield, could casually address herself and Miss Amelia as “dears,”
+thrust cigars on the guard and driver, and call them John and George at
+the very first encounter.
+
+“We—we think this is fairly fast,” Miss Amelia ventured, surprised at her
+own temerity..  “It’s nineteen miles in two hours, and if it’s not so
+fast as a railway train it lets you enjoy the scenery.  It is very much
+admired, our scenery, it’s so—it’s so characteristic.”
+
+“Sure!” said the stranger, “it’s pretty tidy scenery as scenery goes, and
+scenery’s my forte.  But I’d have thought that John here ’d have all this
+part of Caledonia stern and wild so much by heart he’d want to rush it
+and get to where the houses are; but most the time his horses go so slow
+they step on their own feet at every stride.”
+
+“Possibly the coach is a novelty to you,” suggested Miss Amelia, made
+wondrous brave by two weeks’ wild adventuring in Edinburgh.  “I—I take
+you for an American.”
+
+“So did my wife, and she knew, for she belonged out mother’s place,” said
+the stranger, laughing.  “You’ve guessed right, first time.  No, the
+coach is no novelty to me; I’ve been up against a few in various places.
+If I’m short of patience and want more go just at present, it’s because
+I’m full of a good joke on an old friend I’m going to meet at the end of
+these obsequies.”
+
+“Obsequies?” repeated Miss Amelia, with surprise, and he laughed again.
+
+“At the end of the trip,” he explained.  “This particular friend is not
+expecting me, because I hadn’t a post-card, hate a letter, and don’t seem
+to have been within shout of a telegraph office since I left Edinburgh
+this morning.”
+
+“We have just come from Edinburgh ourselves,” Miss Jean chimed in.
+
+“So!” said the stranger, throwing his arm over the back of his seat to
+enter more comfortably into the conversation.  “It’s picturesque.  Pretty
+peaceful, too.  But it’s liable to be a little shy of the Thespian muse.
+I didn’t know more than Cooper’s cow about Edinburgh when I got there
+last Sunday fortnight, but I’ve gone perusing around a bit since; and
+say, my! she’s fine and old!  I wasn’t half a day in the city when I
+found out that when it came to the real legit.  Queen Mary was the
+king-pin of the outfit in Edinburgh.  Before I came to this country I
+couldn’t just place Mary; sometimes she was Bloody, and sometimes she was
+Bonnie, but I suppose I must have mixed her up with some no-account
+English queen of the same name.”
+
+“Edinburgh,” said Miss Amelia, “is redolent of Mary Queen of Scots—and
+Robert Louis.”
+
+“It just is!” he said.  “There’s a little bedroom she had in the Castle
+yonder, no bigger than a Chicago bathroom.  Why, there’s hardly room for
+a nightmare in it—a skittish nightmare ’d kick the transom out.  There
+doesn’t seem to be a single dramatic line in the whole play that Mary
+didn’t have to herself.  She was the entire cast, and the spot light was
+on her for the abduction scene, the child-widow scene, the murder, the
+battle, and the last tag at Fotheringay.  Three husbands and a lot of
+flirtations that didn’t come to anything; her portrait everywhere, and
+the newspapers tracking her up like old Sleuth from that day to this!  I
+guess Queen Lizzie put her feet in it when she killed Mary,—for Mary’s
+the star-line in history, and Lizzie’s mainly celebrated for spoiling a
+good Prince Albert coat on Walter Raleigh.”
+
+He spoke so fast, he used such curious words and idioms which the Misses
+Duff had never heard before nor read in books, that they were sure again
+he was a dreadful person.  With a sudden thought of warnings to “Beware
+of Pickpockets” she had seen in Edinburgh, Miss Amelia clutched so hard
+at the chain of the reticule which held their purse as well as their
+mystery that it broke, and the bag fell over the side of the coach and,
+bursting open, scattered its contents on the road unobserved by the
+guard, whose bugle at the moment was loudly flourishing for the special
+delectation of a girl at work in a neighbouring corn-field.
+
+“Hold hard, John,” said the American, and before the coach had quite
+stopped he was down on the highway recovering the little teachers’
+property.
+
+The serpent had unwound its coils; it lay revealed in all its
+hideousness—a teacher’s tawse!
+
+At such a sad exposure its owners could have wept.  They had never dreamt
+a tawse could look so vulgar and forbidding as it looked when thus
+exposed to the eye of man on the King’s highway.
+
+“Oh, thank you _so_ much,” said Miss Jean.  “It is so kind of you.”
+
+“Exceedingly kind, courteous beyond measure,—we are more than obliged to
+you,” cooed Miss Amelia, with a face like a sunset as she rolled the
+leather up with nervous fingers.
+
+“Got children, ma’am?” asked the American seriously, as the coach
+proceeded on its way.
+
+Miss Amelia Duff made the best joke of her life without meaning it.
+“Twenty-seven,” said she, with an air of great gratitude, and the
+stranger smiled.
+
+“School-ma’rm.  Now that’s good, that is; it puts me in mind of home, for
+I appreciate school-ma’rms so heartily that about as soon as I got out of
+the school myself I married one.  I’ve never done throwing bouquets at
+myself about it ever since, but I’m sorry for the mites she could have
+been giving a good time to as well as their education if it hadn’t been
+that she’s so much mixed up with me.  What made me ask about children was
+that—that medieval animator.  I haven’t seen one for years and years, not
+since old Deacon Springfield found me astray in his orchard one night and
+hiking for a short cut home.  I thought they’d been abolished by the
+treaty of Berlin.”
+
+Miss Amelia thrust it hurriedly into the reticule.  “We have never used
+one all our life,” said she, “but now we fear we have to, and, as you
+see, it’s quite thin—it’s quite a little one.”
+
+“So it is,” said the stranger solemnly.  “It’s thin,—it’s translucent,
+you might say; but I guess the kiddies are pretty little too, and won’t
+be able to make any allowance for the fact that you could have had a
+larger size if you wanted.  It may be light on the fingers and mighty
+heavy on the feelings.”
+
+“That’s what you said,” whispered Miss Amelia to her sister.
+
+“As moral suasion, belting don’t cut ice,” went on the American.  “It’s
+generally only a safety-valve for a wrothy grown-up person with a temper
+and a child that can’t hit back”
+
+“That’s what _you_ said,” whispered Miss Jean to Miss Amelia, and never
+did two people look more miserably guilty.
+
+“What beats me,” said the stranger, “is that you should have got along
+without it so far, and think it necessary now.”
+
+“Perhaps—perhaps we won’t use it,” said Miss Jean.
+
+“Except as—as a sort of symbol,” added her sister.  “We would never have
+dreamt of it if children nowadays were not so different from what they
+used to be.”
+
+“I guess folk’s been saying that quite a while,” said the American.
+“Children never were like what they used to be.  I reckons old Mother
+Nature spits on her hands and makes a fresh start with each baby, and
+never turns out two alike.  That’s why it’s fun to sit and watch ’em
+bloom.  Pretty delicate blooms, too!  Don’t bear much pawing; just give
+them a bit of shelter when the weather’s cold, a prop to lean against if
+they’re leggy and the wind’s high, and see that the fertiliser is the
+proper brand.  Whether they’re going to turn out like the picture on the
+packet or just only weeds depends on the seedsman.”
+
+“Oh, you _don’t_ understand how rebellious they can be!” cried Miss
+Amelia with feeling.  “And they haven’t the old deference to their elders
+that they used to have,—they’re growing bold and independent.”
+
+“Depends on the elders, I suppose.  Over here I think you folks think
+children come into the world just to please grown-ups and do what they’re
+told without any thinking.  In America it’s looked at the other way
+about: the children are considerably more important than their elders,
+and the notion don’t do any harm to either, far as I can see.  As for
+your rebels, ma’am, I’d cherish ’em: rebellion’s like a rash, it’s better
+out than in.”
+
+Ta-ran-ta-ra!  The bugle broke upon their conversation; the coach emerged
+from the wood and dashed down hill, and, wheeling through the arches,
+drew up at the inn.
+
+The American helped the ladies to alight, took off his hat, bade them
+good-day, and turned to speak to his friend the driver, when a hand was
+placed on his sleeve, and a child with a dog at her feet looked up in his
+face.
+
+“Jim!  Why, Jim Molyneux!” cried Bud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+FOR only a day or two the world (in a fur-lined collar) dwelt among us,
+but momentous was its advent to the household Molyneux came visiting.  It
+was as if a high tide had swept the dwelling, Bell remarked when he was
+gone.  You might see no outward difference; the furniture might still be
+as it was, and in the same position as Miss Bell had found it when her
+mother died, but none the less there was an unseen doleful wreckage.
+This unco man Molyneux changed the vital thing, the atmosphere, and the
+house with the brass knocker was never to be altogether just the same
+again.  It is no discovery of mine that what may seem the smallest
+trifles play tremendous parts in destiny.
+
+Even the town itself was some ways altered for a little by the whim that
+took the American actor to it.  That he should be American and actor too
+foredoomed the greatness of his influence, since the combination stood
+for much that was mysterious, half fearful, half sublime, in our simple
+notions of the larger world.  To have been the first alone would have
+endowed him with the charm of wonder and romance for most of us, who, at
+the very sight of the name America, even if it be only on a reaper or a
+can of beef, have some sense of a mightiness that the roar of London
+cannot rouse.  But to be an actor too! earning easy bread by mimicry, and
+in enormous theatres, before light-headed folk that have made money—God
+knows how!—and prospered.  Sinful a little, we allow, for there are
+doubts if the play-actor, having to paint his face and work late hours in
+gas-light, finally shall obtain salvation; sinful, and yet—and yet—so
+queer and clever a way of making out a living!  It is no wonder if we
+looked on Mr Molyneux with that regard which by cities is reserved for
+shahs of a hundred wives, and royal vagabonds.  Besides, consider how the
+way had been prepared for him by Bud!—a child, but a child who had shown
+already how wonderful must be the land that had swallowed up clever men
+like William Dyce and the brother of P. & A. MacGlashan.  Had she not, by
+a single object-lesson in the Pilgrim widow’s warehouse, upset the local
+ways of commerce, so that now, in all the shops, the people were
+constantly buying things of which they had no earthly need; and the
+Pilgrim widow herself was put to the weekly trouble of washing her
+windows, so wasting time that might have been devoted to the Mission?
+Had she not shown that titled ladies were but human after all, and would
+not bite you if you cracked a joke politely with them?  Had she not put
+an end to all the gallivanting of the maid of Colonsay, and given her an
+education that made her fit to court a captain?  And, finally, had she
+not, by force of sheer example, made dumb and stammering bashfulness in
+her fellow pupils at the Sunday-school look stupid, and by her daily walk
+and conversation roused in them a new spirit of inquiry and independence
+that pleased their parents not so badly, and only the little twin
+teachers of the Pigeon Seminary could mistake for the kind of rebellion
+that calls for the application of the tawse?
+
+Mr Molyneux might have no idea of it, but he was a lion for those few
+days of sequestration in what he thought the wilds.  Miss Minto dressed
+her windows specially for his critical eye, and on the tickets of her
+autumn sales gave the name of “waist” to what had hitherto been a blouse
+or a garibaldi; P. & A. MacGlashan made the front of his shop like a
+wharf with piles of empty packing-cases to indicate a prosperous foreign
+and colonial trade; one morning Wanton Wully rang the bell at half-past
+five instead of six to prove how very wide-awake we were; and the band
+paraded once with a new tune, “Off to Philadelphia,” to show that when it
+came to gaiety we were not, though small, so very far behind New York.
+
+But Jim Molyneux, going up and down the street with Lennox and the dog
+for cicerones, peered from under the rim of his hat, and summed all up to
+himself in the words, “Rube town” and “Cobwebopolis.”
+
+Bell took warmly to him from the outset, so much was in his favour.  For
+one thing he was spick and span, though not a jackanapes, with no long
+hair about him as she had expected, and with an honest eye and a good
+complexion that, for simple country ladies, readily pass as the guarantee
+of a being clean within.  She forgave the disreputable part in him—the
+actor, since William had been one, and yet had taught his child her
+prayers; and she was willing to overlook the American, seeing William’s
+wife had suffered from the same misfortune.  But, oh the blow she got
+when she unpacked what he called his grip, and found the main thing
+wanting!
+
+“Where’s your Bible, Mr Molyneux?” she asked solemnly.  “It’s not in your
+portmanteau?”
+
+Again it was in his favour that he reddened, though the excuse he had to
+make was feeble.
+
+“Dear me!” she said, shaking her head, with a sad sort of smile, “and you
+to be so regularly travelling!  If I was your wife I would take you in
+hand!  But perhaps in America there’s no need for a lamp to the feet and
+a light to the path.”
+
+It was after their first supper, for which the patriot Bell had made a
+haggis, that her brother, for Molyneux’s information, said was thought to
+be composed of bagpipes boiled; Bud was gone to bed in the attic, and
+Molyneux was telling how he simply _had_ to come.
+
+“It’s my first time in Scotland,” said he, “and when ‘The Iron Hand’ lost
+its clutch on old Edina’s fancy, and the scenery was arrested, I wasn’t
+so sore about it as I might have been, since it gave me the opportunity
+of coming up here to see girly-girly.  ‘I’ll skiddoo from the gang for a
+day or two,’ I said to the manager, when we found ourselves side-tracked,
+and he said that was all right, he’d wire me when he’d fixed a
+settlement; so I skiddid, and worked my way here with the aid of the
+American language, and a little Scotch—by absorption.”
+
+“We have only one fault with your coming—that it was not sooner,” said Mr
+Dyce.
+
+“And I’m pretty glad I came, if it was only to see what a credit Bud is
+to a Scottish training.  Chicago’s the finest city on earth—in spots;
+America’s what our Fourth of July orators succinctly designate God’s Own,
+and since Joan of Arc there hasn’t been any woman better or braver than
+Mrs Molyneux.  But we weren’t situated to give Bud a show like what she’d
+get in a settled home.  We did our best, but we didn’t dwell, as you
+might say, on Michigan Avenue, and Mrs Molyneux’s a dear good girl, but
+she isn’t demonstratively domesticated.  We suspected from what Bud’s
+father was, the healthiest place she could be was where he came from, and
+though we skipped some sleep, both of us, to think of losing her, now
+that I’m here and see her, I’m glad of it, for my wife and I are pretty
+much on the drift most the time in England as we were in the United
+States.”
+
+“Yours is an exacting calling, Mr Molyneux,” said Mr Dyce.  “It’s very
+much the same in all countries, I suppose?”
+
+“It’s not so bad as stone-breaking, nor so much of a cinch as being a
+statesman,” said Mr Molyneux cheerfully, “but a man’s pretty old at it
+before he gives up hope of breaking out into a very large gun.  I’ve
+still the idea myself that if I’m not likely to be a Booth or Henry
+Irving, I could make a pile at management.  With a millionaire at my back
+for a mascot, and one strong star, I fancy I could cut a pretty wide gash
+through the English dramatic stage.  You know our Mr Emerson said, ‘Hitch
+your waggon to a star.’  I guess if I got a good star bridled, I’d hitch
+a private parlour-car and a steam yacht on to her before she flicked an
+ear.  Who wants a waggon, anyway?”
+
+“A waggon’s fairly safe to travel in,” suggested Mr Dyce, twinkling
+through his glasses.
+
+“So’s a hearse,” said Mr Molyneux quickly.  “Nobody that ever travelled
+in a hearse complained of getting his funny-bone jolted or his feelings
+jarred, but it’s a mighty slow conveyance for live folks.  That’s the
+only thing that seems to me to be wrong with this ’cute little British
+Kingdom: it’s pretty, and it’s what the school-marm on the coach would
+call redolent of the dear dead days beyond recall; and it’s plucky,—but
+it keeps the brakes on most the time, and don’t give its star a chance to
+amble.  I guess it’s a fine, friendly, and crowded country to be born
+rich in, and a pretty peaceful and lonesome country to die poor in; but
+take a tenpenny car-ride out from Charing Cross and you’re in Lullaby
+Land, and the birds are building nests and carolling in your whiskers.
+Life’s short; it only gives a man time to wear through one pair of eyes,
+two sets of teeth, and a reputation, and I want to live every hour of it
+that I’m not conspicuously dead.”
+
+They were silent in the parlour of the old house that had for generations
+sheltered very different ideals, and over the town went the call of the
+wild geese.  The room, low-roofed, small-windowed, papered in dull green,
+curtained against the noises of the street, and furnished with the strong
+mahogany of Grandma Buntain, dead for sixty years, had ever to those who
+knew it best a soul of peace that is not sometimes found in a cathedral.
+They felt in it a sanctuary safe from the fret and tempest, the alarums
+and disillusions of the life out-bye.  In the light of the shaded lamp
+hung over the table, it showed itself to its inmates in the way our most
+familiar surroundings will at certain crises—in an aspect fonder than
+ever it had revealed before.  To Bell, resenting the spirit of this
+actor’s gospel, it seemed as if the room cried out against the sacrilege:
+even Ailie, sharing in her heart, if less ecstatically, the fervour for
+life at its busiest this stranger showed, experienced some inharmony.  To
+Dan it was for a moment as if he heard a man sell cuckoo clocks by
+auction with a tombstone for his rostrum.
+
+“Mr Molyneux,” said he, “you remind me, in what you say, of Maggie
+White’s husband.  Before he died he kept the public-house, and on winter
+nights when my old friend Colin Cleland and his cronies would be sitting
+in the back room with a good light, a roaring fire, and an argument about
+Effectual Calling, so lively that it stopped the effectual and profitable
+call for Johnny’s toddy, he would come in chittering as it were with
+cold, and his coat-collar up on his neck, to say, ‘An awfu’ nicht
+outside!  As dark as the inside o’ a cow, and as cauld as charity!
+They’re lucky that have fires to sit by.’  And he would impress them so
+much with the good fortune of their situation at the time that they would
+order in another round and put off their going all the longer, though the
+night outside, in truth, was no way out of the ordinary.  I feel like
+that about this place I was born in, and its old fashions and its lack of
+hurry, when I hear you—with none of Johnny White’s stratagem—tell us, not
+how dark and cold is the world outside, but what to me, at the age of
+fifty-five, at any rate is just as unattractive.  You’ll excuse me if, in
+a manner of speaking, I ring the bell for another round.  Life’s short,
+as you say, but I don’t think it makes it look any the longer to run
+through the hours of it instead of leisurely daundering—if you happen to
+know what daundering is, Mr Molyneux—and now and then resting on the
+roadside with a friend and watching the others pass.”
+
+“At fifty-five,” said Mr Molyneux agreeably, “I’ll perhaps think so too,
+but I can only look at it from the point of view of thirty-two.  We’ve
+all got to move, at first, Mr Dyce.  That reminds me of a little talk I
+had with Bud to-day.  That child’s grown, Mr Dyce,—grown a heap of ways:
+she’s hardly a child any longer.”
+
+“Tuts!  She’s nothing else!” exclaimed Miss Bell, with some misgiving.
+“When I was her age I was still at my sampler in Barbara Mushet’s.”
+
+“Anyhow she’s grown.  And it seems to me she’s about due for a little
+fresh experience.  I suppose you’ll be thinking of sending her to one of
+those Edinburgh schools to have the last coat of shellac put on her
+education?”
+
+“What put that in your head?  Did she suggest it herself?” asked Mr Dyce
+quickly, with his head to one side in his cross-examination manner.
+
+“Well, she did,—but she didn’t know it,” said Mr Molyneux.  “I guess
+about the very last thing that child ’d suggest to anybody would be that
+she wanted to separate herself from folk she loves so much as you; but,
+if there’s one weakness about her, it is that she can’t conceal what she
+thinks, and I’d not been twenty minutes in her society before I found out
+she had the go-fever pretty bad.  I suspect a predisposition to that
+complaint and a good heart was all her father and mother left her, and
+lolling around and dwelling on the past isn’t apt to be her foible.  Two
+or three years in the boarding-school arena would put the cap sheaf on
+the making of that girl’s character, and I know, for there’s my wife, and
+she had only a year and a half.  If she’d had longer I guess she’d have
+had more sense than marry me.  Bud’s got almost every mortal thing a body
+wants here, I suppose,—love in lumps, a warm moist soil, and all the rest
+of it; but she wants to be hardened-off, and for hardening-off a human
+flower there’s nothing better than a three-course college, where the
+social breeze is cooler than it is at home.”
+
+Miss Bell turned pale—the blow had come!  Dan looked at her with a little
+pity, for he knew she had long been fearfully expecting it.
+
+“Indeed!” said she, “and I do not see the need for any such thing for a
+long while yet.  Do you, Ailie?”  But Ailie had no answer, and that was
+enough to show what she thought.
+
+“I know how it feels at first to think of her going away from home,”
+continued Mr Molyneux, eager to be on with a business he had no great
+heart for.  “Bless you, I know how my wife felt about it,—she cried like
+the cherubim and seraphim.  Said it was snatching all the sunshine out of
+her life, and when I said, ‘Millicent Molyneux, what about hubby?’ she
+just said ‘Scat!’ and threw a couple of agonised throes.  Now,
+Edinburgh’s not so very far away that you’d feel desolated if Bud went to
+a school there.”
+
+“An unhealthy hole, with haars and horrible east wind,” said Miss Bell.
+
+“Well, it isn’t the Pacific Slope, if it comes to climate,” admitted Mr
+Molyneux.
+
+“No, but it’s the most beautiful city in the wide world, for all that,”
+cried Miss Bell, with such spirit that it cleared the air, and made her
+sister and her brother smile, for Molyneux, without his knowing it, had
+touched her in the very heart’s core of her national pride.
+
+“You’re sure you are not mistaken, and that she would wish to go to
+school?” asked Mr Dyce.
+
+“Do you doubt it yourself?” asked Molyneux slyly.
+
+“No,” said Mr Dyce, “I know it well enough, but—but I don’t believe it,”
+and he smiled at his own paradox.
+
+“I have her own words for it.”
+
+“Then she’ll go!” said the lawyer firmly, as if a load was off his mind;
+and, oddly, there were no objections from his sisters.  “You’re not to
+imagine, Mr Molyneux,” he went on, “that we have not thought of this
+before.  It has for months been never out of our minds, as might be seen
+from the fact that we never mentioned it, being loth to take a step
+that’s going to make considerable difference here.  It’s not that we
+feared we should die of ennui in her absence, for we’re all philosophers
+and have plenty to engage our minds as well as our activities, and though
+you might think us rather rusty here we get a good deal of fun with
+ourselves.  She’ll go—oh, yes, of course she’ll go,—Ailie went, and she’s
+no’ muckle the waur o’t, as we say.  I spent some time in the south
+myself, and the only harm it seems to have done me was to make me think
+too much perhaps of my native north.  Taste’s everything, Mr Molyneux,
+and you may retort if you please that I’m like the other Scotsman who
+preferred his apples small and hard and sour.  I think there’s no divine
+instruction, is there, Bell, about apples? and judgments regarding
+different countries and different places in them is mostly a subjective
+thing, like the estimate of beauty apart from its utility—”
+
+“Oh! there you are at your metapheesics, Dan,” cried Miss Bell, “and it’s
+for me and Ailie to make ready the bairn for Edinburgh.  She hasna got a
+stitch that’s fit to be put on.”
+
+Molyneux stared at her—the tone displayed so little opposition to the
+project; and seeing him so much surprised, the three of them smiled.
+
+“That’s us!” said Mr Dyce.  “We’re dour and difficult to decide on
+anything involving change, and hide from ourselves as long as we can the
+need for it; but once our mind’s made up, it’s wonderful how we hurry!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+BELL liked the creature, as I say; not a little because she saw in him
+whence came some part of Bud’s jocosity, and most of the daft-like
+language (though kind of clever too, she must allow) in which it was
+expressed.  It was a different kind of jocosity from Dan’s, whose fun,
+she used to say, partook of the nature of rowan jelly, being tart and
+sweet in such a cunning combination that it tickled every palate and held
+some natural virtue of the mountain tree.  The fun of Molyneux had
+another flavour—it put her in mind of allspice, being foreign, having
+heat as well as savour.  But in each of these droll men was the main
+thing, as she would aye consider it—no distrust of the Creator’s
+judgment, good intentions and ability, and a readiness to be laughed at
+as well as find laughter’s cause in others.  She liked the man, but
+still-and-on was almost glad when the telegram came from Edinburgh and he
+went back to join his company.  It was not any lack of hospitality made
+her feel relief, but the thought that now Bud’s going was determined on,
+there was so much to do in a house where men would only be a bother.
+
+Mr Molyneux found himself so much at home among them, he was loth to go,
+expressing his contempt for a mode of transit to the railway that took
+two hours to nineteen miles; but Bell, defensive even of her country’s
+coaches, told him he was haivering,—that any greater speed than that was
+simply tempting Providence.  He praised the Lord there was no Providence
+to be tempted inside Sandy Hook, and that he knew Beef Kings who hurled
+themselves across the landscape at the rate of a mile a minute.  The fact
+inspired no admiration in Miss Bell: she wondered at the misguided
+wretches scudding like that regardless of their lives, and them with so
+much money.
+
+Before he left he called at the Pigeons’ Seminary to say good-bye to the
+little teachers, and sipped tea,—a British institution which he told them
+was as deleterious as the High Ball of his native land.  High Ball—what
+was a High Ball? asked Miss Amelia, scenting a nice new phrase; but he
+could only vaguely indicate that it was something made of rye and soda.
+Then she understood—it was a teetotal drink men took in clubs, a kind of
+barley-water.  The tea gratified him less than the confidence of the
+twins, who told him they had taken what he said about the—about the
+shameful article so much to heart, that they had given it for a
+razor-strop to one George Jordon.
+
+“Bully for you!” cried Mr Molyneux delighted.  “But I’d have liked that
+tawse some, myself, for my wife’s mighty keen on curios.  She’s got a
+sitting-room full of Navaho things: scalpin’-knives, tomahawks, and other
+brutal bric-a-brac, and an early British strap would tickle her to
+death.”
+
+Well, he was gone: the coachman’s horn had scarcely ceased to echo beyond
+the arches, when Miss Bell had thrown herself into the task of preparing
+for Bud’s change in life.
+
+What school was she to go to in Edinburgh?—Ailie knew: there was none
+better than the one she had gone to herself.
+
+When did it open?—Ailie knew: in a fortnight.
+
+What, exactly, would she need?—Ailie knew that too: she had in the
+escritoire a list of things made up already.
+
+“It seems to me,” said Miss Bell suspiciously, “you’re desperately well
+informed on all that appertains to this sudden necessity.  How long has
+it been in your mind?”
+
+“For a twelvemonth at least,” answered Ailie boldly.  “How long has it
+been in your own?”
+
+“H’m!” said Bell.  “About as long, but I refused to harbour it; and—and
+now that the thing’s decided on, Ailie Dyce, I hope you’re not going to
+stand there arguing away about it all day long, when there’s so much to
+do.”
+
+Surely there was never another house so throng, so bustling, so feverish
+in anxiety, as this one was for the next fortnight.  The upper and the
+lower Dyce Academy took holiday; Kate’s education stopped with a sudden
+gasp at a dreadful hill called Popocatepetl, and she said she did not
+care a button, since Captain Maclean (no longer Charles to any one except
+himself and Bud in the more confidential moments) said the main things
+needed in a sailor’s wife were health, hope, and temper and a few
+good-laying hens.  Miss Minto was engaged upon Bud’s grandest garments,
+running out and in next door herself with inch-tapes over her shoulders
+and a mouthful of pins, and banging up against the lawyer in his lobby to
+her great distress of mind.  And Bell had in the seamstress, ’Lizbeth
+Ann, to help her and Ailie with the rest.  Mercator sulked neglected on
+the wall of Mr Dyce’s study, which was strewn with basting-threads and
+snippets of selvedge and lining till it looked like a tailor’s shop, and
+Bud and Footles played on the floor of it with that content which neither
+youth nor dogs can find in chambers trim and orderly.  Even Kate was
+called in to help these hurried operations—they termed it the making of
+Bud’s trousseau.  In the garden birds were calling, calling; far sweeter
+in the women’s ears were the snip-snip of scissors and the whir of the
+sewing-machine; needle arms went back and forth like fiddle-bows in an
+orchestra, and from webs of cloth and linen came forth garments whose
+variety intoxicated her who was to wear them.  I’m thinking Daniel Dyce
+lived simply then, with rather makeshift dinners, but I’m certain,
+knowing him well, he did not care, since his share in the great adventure
+was to correspond with Edinburgh, and pave the way there for the young
+adventurer’s invasion.
+
+He would keek in at the door on them as he passed to his office, and
+Ailie would cry, “Avaunt, man! here woman reigns.”
+
+“It’s a pleasant change,” he would say.  “I would sooner have them rain
+than storm.”
+
+“You’re as bad as Geordie Jordon,” said Miss Bell, biting thread with
+that zest which always makes me think her sex at some time must have
+lived on cotton,—“you’re as bad as Geordie Jordon, you cannot see a
+keyhole but your eye begins to water.”
+
+If it had indeed been Bud’s trousseau, the town folk could not have
+displayed more interest.  Ladies came each day to see how things
+progressed, and recommend a heavier lining or another row of the
+insertion.  Even Lady Anne came one afternoon to see the trousseau, being
+interested, as she slyly said, in such things for private reasons of her
+own, and dubious about the rival claims of ivory or pure white.  So she
+said; but she came, no doubt, to assure Miss Lennox that her captain was
+a great success.
+
+“I knew he’d be!” said Bud complacently.  “That man’s so beautiful and
+good, he’s fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.”
+
+“So are you—you rogue!” said Lady Anne, gathering her in her arms,
+without a bit of awkwardness, to the great astonishment of ’Lizbeth Ann,
+who thought that titled folk were not a bit like that—perhaps had not the
+proper sort of arms for it.  Yes, “So are you—you rogue!” said Lady Anne.
+
+“No, I’m not,” said the child.  “Leastways only sometimes.  Most the time
+I’m a born limb, but then again I’m nearly always trying to be better,
+and that’s what counts, I guess.”
+
+“And you’re going away to leave us,” said Lady Anne, whereon a strange
+thing happened, for the joyous child, who was to get her heart’s desire
+and such lovely garments, burst into tears, and ran from the room to hide
+herself upstairs in the attic bower, whose windows looked to a highway
+that seemed hateful through her tears.  Her ladyship went off distressed,
+but Bell, as one rejoicing, said, “I always told you, Ailie—William’s
+heart!”
+
+But Bud’s tears were transient: she was soon back among the snippets
+where Ailie briskly plied the sewing-machine, and sang the kind of
+cheerful songs that alone will go to the time of pedalling, and so give
+proof that the age of mechanism is the merry age, if we have the happy
+ear for music.  And Bud, though she tired so soon of hems, could help
+another way that busy convocation, for she could sit tucked up in Uncle
+Dan’s snoozing chair and read ‘Pickwick’ to the women till the maid of
+Colonsay was in the mood to take the Bardell body by the hair of the head
+and shake her for her brazenness to the poor wee man.  Or the child would
+dance as taught by the lady of the Vaudeville, or start at Ailie’s
+bidding (Bell a little dubious) to declaim a bit of “Hamlet” or
+“Macbeth,” till ’Lizbeth Ann saw ghosts and let her nerves get the better
+of her, and there was nothing for it but a cheery cup of tea all round.
+Indeed, I must confess, a somewhat common company!  I could almost wish
+for the sake of my story they were more genteel, and dined at half-past
+seven, and talked in low hushed tones of Bach and Botticelli.
+
+But, oh! they were happy days—at least, so far as all outward symptoms
+went: it might indeed have been a real trousseau, and not the garments
+for the wedding of a maiden and the world.  How often in the later years
+did Winifred Wallace, reading to me her own applause in newspapers, stop
+to sigh and tell me how she once was really happy—happy to the inward
+core, feeling the dumb applause of four women in a country chamber, when
+the world was all before her, and her heart was young.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+WORKING thus, furiously, at the task of love, which, in all it does for
+the youth it cherishes, must ever be digging a grave for its own delight,
+Bell could forget, for periods, that the days of Bud’s presence in their
+midst were numbered.  Had she stopped her needle and shears a moment, and
+let her mind contemplate all the emptiness of a fortnight hence and the
+months and years thereafter, she would have broken down.  Ailie, knowing
+it, watched her anxiously, and kept the sewing briskly going as if they
+wrought for a living in a factory, frightened to think of her sister’s
+desperate state when that last button, that the Armies talk about, was in
+its place.
+
+But the days sped: one afternoon there was a final sweeping up of the
+scraps in the temporary workroom, Bell searched her mind in vain to think
+of anything further wanted, and, though there were still two weeks to go,
+became appalled to find that the only thing of any moment to be done
+’twixt now and Friday fortnight was to say Good-bye!
+
+No, stay!  There was another thing to bring a little respite—the girl’s
+initials must be sewn upon her clothing.  A trivial thing to mention, you
+may think, but the very thought of it gave pleasure to the sisters, till
+Bud herself, sent to Miss Minto’s for a sample of the woven letters, came
+back with only one—it was a W.
+
+“Has the stupid body not got L’s and D’s?” asked Bell.  “There’s no use
+here for W.”  And Bud showed a countenance startled and ashamed.
+
+“Oh, Auntie!” she cried, “I asked for W’s.  I quite forgot my name was
+Lennox Dyce, for in all I’m thinking of about the school and Edinburgh, I
+am Winifred Wallace.”
+
+It was all that was needed to bring about her aunt’s prostration!  “I’m
+far from well,” said she, and took to her bed, her first confession of
+weakness in all the years that Dan or Ailie could remember.  What ailed
+her she could not tell, and they sent, without acquainting her, for Dr
+Brash.  Hearing he was coming, she protested that she could not see the
+man—that she was far too ill to be troubled by any doctor; but Dr Brash
+was not so easily to be denied.
+
+“H’m!” said he, examining her.  “Your system’s badly down.”
+
+“I never knew I had one,” said the lady, smiling wanly, with a touch of
+Dan’s rowan-jelly humour.  “Women had no system in my young days to go up
+or down: if they had, they were ashamed to mention it.  Nowadays, it
+seems as fashionable as what Kate, since she got her education, calls the
+boil.”
+
+“You have been worrying,” he went on,—“a thing that’s dreadfully
+injudicious.  H’m! worse than drink, _I_ say.  Worry’s the death of half
+my patients; they never give my pills a chance,” and there was a twinkle
+in his eyes which most of Dr Brash’s patients thought was far more
+efficacious than his pills.
+
+“What would I worry for?” said Miss Bell.  “I’m sure I have every
+blessing; goodness and mercy all my life.”
+
+“Just so! just so!” said Dr Brash.  “Goodness and—and, h’m—mercy
+sometimes take the form of a warning that it’s time we kept to bed for a
+week, and that’s what I recommend you.”
+
+“Mercy on me!  Am I so far through as that?” she said, alarmed.  “It’s
+something serious,—I know by the cheerful face that you put on you.
+Little did I think that I would drop off so soon.  And just at the very
+time when there’s so much to do!”
+
+“Pooh!” said Dr Brash.  “When you drop off, Miss Dyce, there’ll be an
+awful dunt, I’m telling you!  God bless my soul, what do you think a
+doctor’s for but putting folk on their pins again!  A week in
+bed—and—h’m!—a bottle.  Everything’s in the bottle, mind you!”
+
+“And there’s the hands of the Almighty too,” said Bell, who constantly
+deplored the doctor was so poor a Kirk attender, and not a bit in that
+respect like the noble doctors in her sister’s latest Scottish novels.
+
+Dr Brash went out of the room, to find the rest of the household sorely
+put about in the parlour, Lennox an object of woe, and praying hard to
+herself with as much as she could remember of her Uncle Dan’s successful
+supplication for herself when she had the pneumonia.  To see the
+cheerfulness of his countenance when he came in was like the sun-burst on
+a leaden sea.  “Miss Bell’s as sound as her namesake,” he assured them.
+“There’s been something on her mind”—with a flash of the eye, at once
+arrested, towards Lennox,—“and she has worked herself into a state of
+nervous collapse.  I’ve given her the best of tonics for her kind,—the
+dread of a week in bed,—and I’ll wager she’ll be up by Saturday.  The
+main thing is to keep her cheerful, and I don’t think that should be very
+difficult.”
+
+Bud there and then made up her mind that her own true love was Dr Brash,
+in spite of his nervous sisters and his funny waistcoats.  Ailie said if
+cheerfulness would do the thing she was ready for laughing-gas, and the
+lawyer vowed he would rake the town for the very latest chronicles of its
+never-ending fun.
+
+But Bud was long before him on her mission of cheerfulness to the bedroom
+of Auntie Bell.  Did you ever see a douce Scotch lass who never in her
+life had harboured the idea that her native hamlet was other than the
+finest dwelling-place in all the world, and would be happy never to put a
+foot outside it?—that was to be the _rôle_ to-day.  A sober little lass,
+sitting in a wicker-chair whose faintest creak appeared to put her in an
+agony—sitting incredibly long and still, and speaking Scotch when spoken
+to, in the most careful undertone, with a particular kind of smile that
+was her idea of judicious cheerfulness for a sick-room.
+
+“Bairn!” cried her aunt at last, “if you sit much longer like that you’ll
+drive me crazy.  What in the world’s the matter with you?”
+
+“Nothing, dear Auntie Bell,” said Bud, astonished.
+
+“You needn’t tell me!  What was the Doctor saying?”
+
+“He said you were to be kept cheerful,” said Bud, “and I’m doing the best
+I can—”
+
+“Bless me, lass! do you think it’s cheery to be sitting there with a face
+like a Geneva watch?  I would sooner see you romping.”
+
+But no, Bud could not romp that day, and when her Uncle Dan came up he
+found her reading aloud from Bell’s favourite Gospel according to
+John—her auntie’s way of securing the cheerfulness required.  He looked
+at the pair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent, and all the
+joviality with which he had come carefully charged gave place for a
+little to a graver sentiment.  So had Ailie sat, a child, beside her
+mother on her death-bed, and, reading John one day, found open some new
+vista in her mind that made her there and then renounce her dearest
+visions, and thirl herself for ever to the home and him and Bell.
+
+“Well, Dan,” said his sister, when the child was gone, “what have you
+brought me?  Is it the usual pound of grapes?”—for she was of the kind
+whose most pious exercises never quench their sense of fun, and a gift of
+grapes in our place is a doleful hint to folks bedridden: I think they
+sometimes might as well bring in the stretching-board.
+
+“A song-book would suit you better,” said the lawyer.  “What do you
+think’s the matter with you?  Worrying about that wean!  Is this your
+Christian resignation?”
+
+“I am _not_ worrying, Dan,” she protested.  “At least, not very much, and
+I never was the one to make much noise about my Christianity.”
+
+“You need to be pretty noisy with it nowadays to make folk believe you
+mean it.”
+
+“What did Dr Brash say down the stair?” she asked.  “Does he—does he
+think I’m going to die?”
+
+“Lord bless me!” cried her brother, “this is not the way that women die.
+I never heard of you having a broken heart.  You’re missing all the usual
+preliminaries, and you haven’t even practised being ill.  No, no, Bell;
+it’ll be many a day, I hope, before you’re pushing up the daisies, as
+that vagabond Wanton Wully puts it.”
+
+Bell sighed.  “You’re very joco’,” said she; “you’re aye cheery, whatever
+happens.”
+
+“So long as it doesn’t happen to myself—that’s philosophy; at least it’s
+Captain Consequence’s.  And if I’m cheery to-day it’s by the Doctor’s
+orders.  He says you’re to be kept from fretting, even if we have to hire
+the band.”
+
+“Then I doubt I’m far far through!” said Bell; “I’m booked for a better
+land,”—and at that the lawyer gave a chirruping little laugh, and said,
+“Are you sure it’s not for Brisbane?”
+
+“What do you mean?” she asked him, marvellously interested for one who
+talked of dying.
+
+“It’s a new one,” he exclaimed.  “I had it to-day from her ladyship’s
+Captain.  He was once on a ship that sailed to Australia, and half-way
+out a passenger took very ill.  ‘That one’s booked for heaven, anyway,’
+Maclean said to the purser.  ‘No,’ said the purser, who was busy, ‘he’s
+booked for Brisbane.’  ‘Then he would be a D. sight better in heaven,’
+said Maclean; ‘I have been twice in Brisbane, and I know.’”
+
+Bell did her best to restrain a smile, but couldn’t.  “Oh, Dan!” said
+she, “you’re an awful man!  You think there’s nothing in this world to
+daunten anybody.”
+
+“Not if they happen to be Dyces,” said he.  “A high heart and a humble
+head—you remember father’s motto?  And here you’re dauntened because the
+young one’s going only one or two hundred miles away for her own
+advantage.”
+
+“I’m not a bit dauntened,” said Miss Bell with spirit.  “It’s not myself
+I’m thinking of at all—it’s her, poor thing! among strangers night and
+day; damp sheets, maybe, and not a wise-like thing to eat.  You would
+never forgive yourself if she fell into a decline.”
+
+“Ailie throve pretty well on their dieting,” he pointed out; “and if
+she’s going to fall into a decline, she’s pretty long of starting.”
+
+“But you mind they gave her sago pudding,” said Miss Bell; “and if
+there’s one thing Lennox cannot eat, it’s sago pudding.  She says it is
+so slippy, every spoonful disappears so sudden it gives her an awful
+start.  She says she might as well sup puddocks.”
+
+Dan smiled at the picture and forced himself to silent patience.
+
+“And they’ll maybe let her sit up to all hours,” Bell proceeded.  “You
+know the way she fastens on a book at bed-time!”
+
+“Well, well!” said he emphatically.  “If you’re sure that things are to
+be so bad as that, we’ll not let her go at all,” and he slyly scanned her
+countenance to see, as he expected, that she was indignant at the very
+thought of backing out now that they had gone so far.
+
+“You needn’t start to talk nonsense,” said she; “of course she’s going.
+But oh, Dan! it’s not the sheets, nor food, nor anything like that, that
+troubles me; it’s the knowledge that she’ll never be the same wee lass
+again.”
+
+“Tuts!” said Daniel Dyce, and cleaned some moisture from his spectacles;
+“you’re putting all the cheerful things I was going to say to you out of
+my head.  I’m off to business; is there anything I can do for you?  No.
+Then, remember, you’re not to stir this week outside the blankets; these
+are the orders of Dr Brash.  I have no doubt Ailie will do very well at
+the house-keeping,” and he left her with a gleam of mischief in his eye.
+
+The window of the bedroom was a little open; on one of the trees a
+blackbird sang, and there came in the scent of apple-ringie and a
+tempting splendour of sun.  For twenty minutes the ailing lady tried to
+content herself with the thought of a household managed by Alison Dyce,
+and then arose to see if Wully Oliver was not idling in the garden.  She
+saw him sitting on his barrow-trams, while Ailie walked among the
+dahlias, and chucked her favourites of them under their chins.
+
+“William Oliver!” cried Miss Bell indignantly, having thrown a Shetland
+shawl about her; “is that all the work you can do in a day?”
+
+He looked up at the window and slowly put his pipe in his pocket.
+
+“Well, m’em,” said he, “I daresay I could do more, but I never was much
+of a hand for showing off.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+WHEN Miss Bell rose, as she did in a day or two, bantered into a speedy
+convalescence by Ailie and Dan, it was to mark Bud’s future holidays on
+the calendar, and count the months in such a cunning way that she cheated
+the year of a whole one, by arguing to herself that the child would be
+gone a fortnight before they really missed her, and as good as home again
+whenever she started packing to return.  And Edinburgh, when one was
+reasonable and came to think of it, was not so very awful: the Miss Birds
+were there, in the next street to the school where Bud was bound for, so
+if anything should happen,—a fire, for instance—fires were desperately
+common just now in the newspapers, and ordinary commonsense suggested a
+whole clothes-rope for the tying up of the young adventurer’s boxes; or
+if Bud should happen to be really hungry between her usual meals—a common
+thing with growing bairns,—the Birds were the very ones to make her
+welcome.  It was many a year since Bell had been in Edinburgh,—she had
+not been there since mother died,—she was determined that, if she had the
+money and was spared till Martinmas, she should make a jaunt of it and
+see the shops: it was very doubtful if Miss Minto wasn’t often lamentably
+out of date with many of her fashions.
+
+“Oh, you vain woman!” cried Ailie to her; “will nothing but the very
+latest satisfy you?”
+
+Bud was to be sure and write once every week, on any day but Saturday,
+for if her letters came on Sunday they would be tempted to call at the
+post-office for them, like Captain Consequence, instead of waiting till
+the Monday morning.  And if she had a cold or any threatening of quinsy,
+she was to fly for her very life to the hoarhound mixture, put a stocking
+round her neck, and go to bed.  Above all, was she to mind and take her
+porridge every morning, and to say her prayers.
+
+“I’ll take porridge to beat the band,” Bud promised, “even—even if I have
+to shut my eyes all through.”
+
+“In a cautious moderation,” recommended Uncle Dan.  “I think myself
+oatmeal is far too rich a diet for the blood.  I have it from Captain
+Consequence that there’s nothing for breakfast like curried kidney and a
+chop to follow.  But I hope you’ll understand that, apart from the carnal
+appetites, the main thing is to scoop in all the prizes.  I’ll be
+dreadfully disappointed if you come back disgraced, with anything less of
+them than the full of a cart.  That, I believe, is the only proof of a
+liberal Scottish education.  In Ailie’s story-books it’s all the good,
+industrious, and deserving pupils who get everything.  Of course, if you
+take all the prizes somebody’s sure to want,—but, tuts! I would never let
+that consideration vex me—it’s their own look-out.  If you don’t take
+prizes, either in the school or in the open competition of the world, how
+are folk to know they should respect you?”
+
+“You must have been a wonderfully successful student in your day,” said
+Ailie mischievously.  “Where are all your medals?”
+
+Dan laughed.  “It’s ill to say,” said he, “for the clever lads who won
+them when I wasn’t looking have been so modest ever since that they’ve
+clean dropped out of sight.  I never won anything myself in all my life
+that called for competition—except the bottom of the class!  When it came
+to competitions, and I could see the other fellows’ faces, I was always
+far too tired or well disposed to them to give them a disappointment
+which they seemingly couldn’t stand so well as myself.  But then I’m not
+like Bud here.  I hadn’t a shrewd old uncle egging me on.  So you must be
+keen on the prizes, Bud.  Of course there’s wisdom too, but that comes
+later,—there’s no hurry for it.  Prizes, prizes—remember the prizes: the
+more you win, the more, I suppose, I’ll admire you.”
+
+“And if I don’t win any, Uncle Dan?” said Bud slyly, knowing very well
+the nature of his fun.
+
+“Then, I suppose, I’ll have to praise the Lord if you keep your health,
+and just continue loving you,” said the lawyer.  “I admit that if you’re
+anyway addicted to the prizes, you’ll be the first of your name that was
+so.  In that same school in Edinburgh your Auntie Ailie’s quarterly
+reports had always ‘Conduct—Good,’ and ‘Mathematics—Fairly moderate.’  We
+half expected she was coming back an awful dilly; but if she did, she
+made a secret of it.  I forgave her the ‘Fairly moderate’ myself, seeing
+she had learned one thing—how to sing.  I hope you’ll learn to sing, Bud,
+in French, or German, or Italian—anything but Scotch.  Our old Scotch
+songs, I’m told, are not what’s called artistic.”
+
+“The sweetest in the world!” cried Auntie Bell.  “I wonder to hear you
+haivering.”
+
+“I’m afraid you’re not a judge of music,” said the brother.  “Scotch
+songs are very common—everybody knows them.  There’s no art in them,
+there’s only heart—a trifling kind of quality.  If you happen to hear me
+singing ‘Annie Laurie’ or ‘Afton Water’ after you come home, Bud, be sure
+and check me.  I want to be no discredit to you.”
+
+“No, I shan’t, Uncle Dan,” said the child.  “I’ll sing ‘Mary Morison,’
+and ‘Ae Fond Kiss,’ and ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ at you till you’re fairly
+squealing with delight.  I know.  Allow me! why, you’re only haivering.”
+
+“Have mercy on the child, Dan,” said his sister.  “Never you mind him,
+Bud; he’s only making fun of you.”
+
+“I know,” said Bud; “but I’m not kicking.”
+
+Kate—ah! poor Kate—how sorry I should be for her, deserted by her friend
+and tutor, if she had not her own consoling Captain.  Kate would be
+weeping silently every time the pipe was on in the scullery, and she
+thought how lonely her kitchen was to be when the child was gone.  And
+she had plans to make that painful exile less heartrending: she was going
+to write to her sister out in Colonsay and tell her to be sure and send
+fresh country eggs at intervals of every now and then, or maybe oftener
+in the winter-time, to Lennox; for the genuine country egg was a thing it
+was hopeless to expect in Edinburgh, where there wasn’t such a thing as
+sand, or grass, or heather—only causeway stones.  She could assure Lennox
+that, as for marriage, there was not the slightest risk for years and
+years, since there wasn’t a house in the town to let that would be big
+enough (and still not dear) to suit a Captain.  He was quite content to
+be a plain intended, and hold on.  And as for writing, she would take her
+pen in hand quite often and send the latest news to Lennox, who must
+please excuse haste, and these d-d-desperate pens, and having the post to
+catch—not that she would dream of catching the poor, wee, shauchly
+creature: it was just a way of speaking.  Would Lennox not be dreadful
+home-sick, missing all the cheery things, and smothered up in books in
+yon place—Edinburgh?
+
+“I expect I’ll be dre’ffle home-sick,” admitted Bud.
+
+“I’m sure you will, my lassie,” said the maid.  “I was so home-sick
+myself when I came here at first that my feet got almost splay with
+wanting to turn back to Colonsay.  But if I’m not so terribly
+good-looking, I’m awful brave, and soon got over it.  When you are
+home-sick go down to the quay and look at the steamboats, or take a turn
+at our old friend Mr Puckwuck.”
+
+Four days—three days—two days—one day—to-morrow; that last day went so
+fast, it looked as if Wanton Wully had lost the place again and rang the
+evening bell some hours before it was due.  Bud could only sit by,
+helpless, and marvel at the ingenuity that could be shown in packing what
+looked enough to stock Miss Minto’s shop into a couple of boxes.  She
+aged a twelvemonth between the hand-glass at the bottom and the
+bath-sheet on the top.
+
+“And in this corner,” said Miss Bell, on her knees, “you’ll find your
+Bible, the hoarhound mixture, and five-and-twenty threepenny-bits for the
+plate on Sundays.  Some of them sixpences.”
+
+“Irish ones, apparently,” said Uncle Dan.
+
+“Some of them sixpences, for the Foreign Mission days, and one shilling
+for the day of the Highlands and Islands.”
+
+“You’re well provided for the kirk at any rate,” said Uncle Dan.  “I’ll
+have to put a little money for this wicked world in the other corner,”
+and he did.
+
+When the coach next day set out—No, no, I cannot tell you all, for I hate
+to think of tears, and would hurry over partings.  It went in tearful
+weather, rain drizzling on Bud and Auntie Ailie, who accompanied her.
+They looked back on the hill-top, and saw the grey slates glint under a
+grey sky, and following them on the miry road, poor Footles, faithful
+heart, who did not understand.  He paddled through the mud till a blast
+from the bugle startled him, and he seemed to realise that this was some
+painful new experience.  And then he stood in the track of the
+disappearing wheels, and lifted up his voice in lamentation.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The night came on, resuming her ancient empire—for she alone, and not the
+day, did first possess and finally shall possess unquestioned this space
+dusty with transient stars, and the light is Lord of another universe
+where is no night, nay, nor terror thereof.  From the western clouds were
+the flame and gold withdrawn, and the winds sighed from the mountains, as
+vexed for passing days.  The winds sighed from the mountains, and the
+mists came mustering to the glens; the sea crept out on long,
+bird-haunted, wailing, and piping sands, nought to be seen of it, its
+presence obvious only in the scent of wrack and the wash on the pebbled
+beaches.  Behind the town the woods lay black and haunted, and through
+them, and far upward in the valley, dripping in the rain and clamorous
+with hidden burns and secret wells, went the highway to the world, vacant
+of aught visible, but never to be wholly vacant, since whoso passes on a
+highway ever after leaves some wandering spirit there.  Did the child,
+that night, think of the highway that had carried her from home?  In the
+hoarsely crying city did she pause a moment to remember and retrace her
+way to the little town that now lay faintly glowing in the light of its
+own internal fires?
+
+Thus Bell wondered, standing at her window, looking into the solitary
+street.  Every mile of separating highway rose before her,—she walked
+them in the rain and dark; all the weary longing of the world came down
+on her that mirk night in September, and praying that discretion should
+preserve and understanding keep her wanderer, she arrived at the soul’s
+tranquillity, and heard without misgiving the wild geese cry.
+
+Her brother took the Books, and the three of them—master, mistress, and
+maid—were one in the spirit of worship, longing, and hope.  Where, then,
+I wonder, had gone Daniel Dyce, the lawyer, the gentle ironist, on whose
+lips so often was kindly mockery, on whose tongue levity or its pretence—
+
+   “Never by passion quite possess’d,
+   And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway”?
+
+It was Bell’s nightly duty to turn the lamp out in the lobby and bolt the
+outer door.  She went this night reluctant to perform that office, but a
+thought possessed her of a child from home, somewhere in the darkness
+among strangers, and she had to call her brother.
+
+“What is it?” said he.
+
+“The door,” she said, ashamed of herself, “I cannot bolt it,”
+
+He looked at her flushed face and her trembling hand, and understood.
+“It’s only the door of a house,” said he; “_that_ makes no difference,”
+and ran the bolt into its staple.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+FOR all the regrets of increasing age there is one alleviation among
+many, that days apart from those we love pass the quicker, even as our
+hurrying years.  Thus it is that separations are divested of more and
+more of their terrors the nearer we are to that final parting which wipes
+out all, and is but the going to a great reunion.  So the first
+fortnight, whereof Miss Bell thought to cheat the almanac under the
+delusion that Bud’s absence would then scarcely be appreciated, was in
+truth the period when she missed her most, and the girl was back for her
+Christmas holidays before half of her threepenny-bits for the plate were
+done.
+
+It was worth a year of separation to see her come in at the door, rosy
+from the frosty air, with sparkling eyes and the old, sweet, rippling
+laugh, not—outside at least—an atom different from the girl who had gone
+away; and it made up to Bud herself for many evenings home-sick on an
+Edinburgh pillow to smell again the old celestial Christmas grocery and
+feel the warmth of her welcome.
+
+Myself, I like to be important—not of such consequence to the world as to
+have it crick its neck with having to look up at me, but now and then
+important only to a few old friends; and Bud, likewise, could always
+enjoy the upper seat, if the others of her company were never below the
+salt.  She basked in the flattery that Kate’s deportment gave to her
+dignity as a young lady educated at tremendous cost.
+
+It was the daft days of her first coming over again; but this time she
+saw all with older eyes,—and, besides, the novelty of the little Scottish
+town was ended.  Wanton Wully’s bell, pealing far beyond the burgh
+bounds,—commanding, like the very voice of God, to every ear of that
+community, no matter whether it rang at morn or eve,—gave her at once a
+crystal notion of the smallness of the place, not only in its bounds of
+stone and mortar, but in its interests, as compared with the city, where
+a thousand bells, canorous on the Sabbath, failed, it was said, to reach
+the ears of more than a fraction of the people.  The bell, and John
+Taggart’s band on Hogmanay, and the little shops with windows falling
+back already on timid appeals, and the grey high tenements pierced by
+narrow entries, and the douce and decent humdrum folk,—she saw them with
+a more exacting vision, and Ailie laughed to hear them all summed up as
+“quaint.”
+
+“I wondered when you would reach ‘quaint,’” said Auntie Ailie; “it was
+due some time ago, but this is a house where you never hear the word.
+Had you remained at the Pige— at the Misses Duff’s Seminary Miss Amelia
+would have had you sewing it on samplers, if samplers any longer were the
+fashion.”
+
+“Is it not a nice word ‘quaint’?” asked Bud, who, in four months among
+critics less tolerant (and perhaps less wise) than the Dyces, had been
+compelled to rid herself of many transatlantic terms and phrases.
+
+“There’s nothing wrong with ‘quaint,’ my dear,” said Miss Ailie; “it
+moves in the most exclusive circles: if I noticed it particularly, it is
+because it is the indication of a certain state of mind, and tells me
+where you stand in your education more clearly than your first quarterly
+report.  I came home from school with ‘quaint’ myself: it not only seemed
+to save a lot of trouble by being a word which could be applied to
+anything not otherwise describable, but I cherished it because its use
+conferred on me a kind of inward glow of satisfaction like—like—like Aunt
+Bell’s home-made ginger-cordial.  ‘Quaint,’ Bud, is the shibboleth of
+boarding-school culture: when you can use the word in the proper place,
+with a sense of superiority to the thing so designated, you are
+practically a young lady and the polish is taking on.”
+
+“They all say it in our school,” explained Bud apologetically; “at least,
+all except The Macintosh,—I couldn’t think of her saying it somehow.”
+
+“Who’s The Macintosh?” asked Ailie.
+
+“Why! was there no Macintosh in your time?” exclaimed Bud.  “I thought
+she went away back to the—to the Roman period.  She’s the funniest old
+lady in the land, and comes twice a-week to teach us dancing and
+deportment.  She’s taught them to mostly all the nobility and gentry of
+Scotland; she taught Lady Anne and all her brothers when they were in St
+Andrews.”
+
+“I never heard of her,” said Ailie; “she must be—be—be decidedly quaint.”
+
+“She’s so quaint you’d think she’d be kept in a corner cupboard with a
+bag of camphor at the back to scare the moths away.  She’s a little wee
+mite, not any bigger than me—than I,—and they say she’s seventy years
+old, but sometimes she doesn’t look a day more than forty-five if it
+weren’t for her cap and her two front teeth missing.  She’s got the
+loveliest fluffy silver hair—pure white, like Mrs Molyneux’s Aunt
+Tabitha’s Persian cat; cheeks like an apple, hands as young as yours, and
+when she walks across a room she glides like this, so you’d think she was
+a cutter yacht—”
+
+Bud sailed across the parlour to represent the movement of The Macintosh
+with an action that made her aunties laugh, and the dog gave one short
+yelp of disapproval.
+
+“That was the way that Grandma Buntain walked,—it used to be considered
+most genteel,” said Bell.  “They trained girls up to do it with a
+back-board and a book on the top of the head; but it was out before my
+time; we just walked anyway in Barbara Mushet’s Seminary, where the main
+things were tambouring and the Catechism.”
+
+“Miss Macintosh is a real lady,” Bud went on.  “She’s got genuine old
+ancestors.  They owned a Highland place called Kaims, and the lawyers
+have almost lawyered it a’ awa’ she says, so now she’s simply got to help
+make a living teaching dancing and deportment.  I declare I don’t know
+what deportment is no more than the child unborn, unless it’s shutting
+the door behind you, walking into a room as if your head and your legs
+were your own, keeping your shoulders back, and being polite and kind to
+everybody, and I thought folks ’d do all that without attending classes,
+unless they were looney.  Miss Macintosh says they are the _sine qua non_
+and principal branches for a well-bred young lady in these low days of
+clingy frocks and socialism; but the Principal she just smiles and gives
+us another big block of English history.  Miss Macintosh doesn’t let on,
+but I know she simply can’t stand English history, for she tells us,
+spells between quadrilles, that there hasn’t been any history anywhere
+since the Union of the Parliaments, except the Rebellion of 1745.  But
+she doesn’t call it a rebellion.  She calls it ‘yon affair.’  _She’s_
+Scotch!  I tell you, Auntie Bell, you’d love to meet her!  I sit, and
+sit, and look at her like—like a cat.  She wears spectacles, just a
+little clouded, only she doesn’t call them spectacles; she says they are
+preserves, and that her eyes are as good as anybody’s.  They’re bright
+enough, I tell you, for over seventy.”
+
+“Indeed I would like to see the creature!” exclaimed Miss Bell.  “She
+must be an original!  I’m sometimes just a trifle tired of the same old
+folk about me here,—I know them all so well, and all they’re like to do
+or say, that there’s nothing new or startling to be expected from them.”
+
+“Would you like to see her?” said Bud quickly; “then—then, some day I’ll
+tell her, and I’ll bet she’ll come.  She dresses queer—like a lady in the
+‘School for Scandal,’ and wears long mittens like Miss Minto, and when
+our music-master, Herr Laurent, is round she makes goo-goo eyes at him
+fit to crack her glasses.  ‘Oh, Hair-r-r!’ she says, sitting with her
+mitts in her lap,—‘oh, Hair-r-r! can you no’ give the young ladies
+wise-like Scotch sangs, instead o’ that dreich Concone?’  And sometimes
+she’ll hit him with a fan.  He says she plays the piano to our dancing
+the same as it was a spinet.”
+
+“I declare it beats all!” said Miss Bell.  “Does the decent old body
+speak Scotch?”
+
+“Sometimes.  When she’s making goo-goo eyes at the Herr, or angry, or
+finding fault with us but doesn’t want to hurt our feelings.”
+
+“I can understand that,” said Miss Bell, with a patriot’s fervour;
+“there’s nothing like the Scotch for any of them; I fall to it myself
+when I’m sentimental.  And so does your Uncle Dan.”
+
+“She says she’s the last of the real Macintoshes,—that all the rest you
+see on Edinburgh signboards are only incomers or poor de-degenerate
+cadets; and I guess the way she says it, being a de-degenerate cadet
+Macintosh must be the meanest thing under the cope and canopy.  Heaps of
+those old ancestors of hers went out in the days of the clans, fighting
+for any royalty that happened along.  She’s got all their hair in
+lockets, and makes out that when they disappeared Scotland got a pretty
+hard knock.  I said to her once the same as Aunt Ailie says to you, Aunt
+Bell, ‘English and Scots, I s’pose we’re all God’s people, and it’s a
+terribly open little island to be quarrelling in, seeing all the
+Continent can hear us quite plain’; but she didn’t like it.  She said it
+was easy seen I didn’t understand the dear old Highland mountains, where
+her great-great-grandfather, Big John of the Axe, could collect five
+hundred fighting-men if he wagged a fiery cross at them.  ‘I have Big
+John’s blood in me!’ she said, quite white, and her head shaking so much
+her preserves nearly fell off her nose.  ‘I’ve Big John’s blood in me;
+and when I think of things, _I hate the very name o’ thae aboaminable
+English_!’  ‘Why, you’ve never seen them, Miss Macintosh,’ I said—for I
+knew she’d never had a foot outside Scotland.  ‘No,’ said she, quite
+sharp, ‘and I don’t want to; for they might be nice enough, and then I
+wad be bound to like them.’”
+
+“Oh, Bell!” cried Ailie, laughing, “Miss Macintosh is surely your
+doppelganger.”
+
+“I don’t know what a doppelganger is,” said Auntie Bell; “but she’s a
+real sensible body, and fine I would like to see her.”
+
+“Then I’ll have to fix it somehow,” said Bud, with emphasis.  “P’raps
+you’ll meet her when you come to Edinburgh—”
+
+“I’m not there yet, my dear.”
+
+“—Or she might be round this way by-and-by.  She’d revel in this place;
+she’d maybe not call it quaint, but she’d find it pretty careless about
+being in the—in the modern rush she talks about, and that would make her
+happier than a letter from home.  I believe The Macintosh—”
+
+“Miss Macintosh, my dear,” said Bell reprovingly, and the girl reddened.
+
+“_I_ know,” said she.  “It’s mean to talk of her same as she was a
+waterproof, and I often try not to, because I like her immensely; but
+it’s so common among the girls that I forget.  I believe Miss Macintosh
+would love this place, and could stop in it for ever.”
+
+“Couldn’t you?” asked Auntie Ailie slyly.
+
+Bud hesitated.  “Well, I—I like it,” said she.  “I just love to lie awake
+nights and think about it, and I can hear the wind in the trees and the
+tide come in, and the bell, and the wild geese; and family worship at the
+Provost’s on Sunday nights, and I can almost _be_ here, I think so
+powerfully about it; but—but—”
+
+She stopped short, for she saw a look of pain in the face of her Auntie
+Bell.
+
+“But what?” said the latter sharply.
+
+“Oh! I’m a wicked, cruel, ungrateful girl, Auntie Bell; and I ought to
+want to love this place so much, nobody could push me out of it.  And I
+_do_ love it; but I feel if I lived here always I’d not grow any more.”
+
+“You’re big enough,” said Auntie Bell.  “You’re as big as myself now.”
+
+“I mean inside.  Am I a prig, Aunt Ailie?  I’d hate to be a prig!  But
+I’d hate as bad to tell a lie; and I feel I’d never learn half so much or
+do half so much here as I’d do where thousands of folk were moving along
+in a procession, and I was with them too.  A place like this is like a
+kindergarten—it’s good enough as far’s it goes, but it doesn’t teach the
+higher branches.”
+
+Bell gazed at her in wonder and pity and blame, shaking her head.  All
+this was what she had anticipated.
+
+“I know the feeling,” said Aunt Ailie, “for I have shared it myself; and
+sometimes still it will come back to me, but in my better hours I think
+I’m wiser and can be content.  If there is growth in you, you will grow
+anywhere.  You were born in the noise of Chicago, Bud, and I suppose it’s
+hard to get it out of the ears.  By-and-by I hope you’ll find that we are
+all of us most truly ourselves not in the crowd but when we are alone,
+and that not the smallest hamlet in the world need be intellectually
+narrow for any one with imagination, some books, and a cheerful
+constitution.  Do you understand that, Bud?”
+
+Bud thought hard for a moment and then shook her head.  “It sounds as if
+it ought to be true,” said she, “and I daresay you think just now it is
+true; but I simply can’t believe it.”  And all of them turned at the
+sound of a chuckling laugh, to find that Mr Dyce had heard this frank
+confession.
+
+“That’s the worst of you, Bud,” said he.  “You will never let older folk
+do your thinking for you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+IT is another mercy, too, that in our age we learn to make the best of
+what aforetime might be ill to thole, as Bell made fine new garments out
+of old ones faded by turning them outside in and adding frills and
+flounces.  Bud’s absence early ceased to be deplorable, since it wakened
+cheerful expectations not to be experienced had she stayed at home; gave
+rise to countless fond contrivances for her happiness in exile; and two
+or three times a-year to periods of bliss, when her vacations gave the
+house of Dyce the very flower of ecstasy.  Her weekly letters of
+themselves were almost compensation for her absence.  On the days of
+their arrival, Peter the post would come blithely whistling with his M.C.
+step to the lawyer’s kitchen window before he went to the castle itself,
+defying all routine and the laws of the Postmaster-General, for he knew
+Miss Dyce would be waiting feverishly, having likely dreamt the night
+before of happy things that—dreams going by contraries, as we all of us
+know in Scotland—might portend the most dreadful tidings.
+
+Bud’s envelope was always on the top of his budget.  For the sake of it
+alone (it sometimes seemed to Peter and those who got it) had the mail
+come splashing through the night,—the lawyer’s big blue envelopes, as it
+were, had got but a friendly lift through the courtesy of clerks in
+Edinburgh, and the men on the railway train, and the lad who drove the
+gig from Maryfield.  What were big blue envelopes of the business world
+compared with the modest little square of grey with Lennox Dyce’s writing
+on it?
+
+“Here’s the usual!  Pretty thick to-day!” would Peter say, with a smack
+of satisfaction on the window-sash.  Ah, those happy Saturdays!
+Everybody knew about them.  “And how’s hersel’?” the bell-ringer would
+ask in the by-going, not altogether because his kindly interest led to an
+eye less strict on his lazy moods in the garden.  One Fair day, when
+Maggie White’s was irresistible, it rang so merrily with drovers, and he
+lost the place again, he stopped the lawyer on the street to ask him what
+Miss Lennox thought of all this argument about the Churches, seeing she
+was in the thick of it in Edinburgh.
+
+“Never you mind the argument, Will,” said Daniel Dyce,—“you do your duty
+by the Auld Kirk bell; and as for the Free folk’s quarrelling, amang them
+be’t!”
+
+“But can you tell me, Mr D-D-Dyce,” said Wanton Wully, with as much
+assurance as if he was prepared to pay by the Table of Fees, “what’s the
+difference between the U.F.’s and the Frees?  I’ve looked at it from
+every point, and I canna see it.”
+
+“Come and ask me some day when you’re sober,” said the lawyer, and Wanton
+Wully snorted.
+
+“If I was sober,” said he, “I wouldna want to ken—I wouldna give a
+curse.”
+
+Yet each time Bud came home she seemed, to the mind of her Auntie Bell, a
+little farther off from them—a great deal older, a great deal less
+dependent, making for womanhood in a manner that sometimes was
+astounding, as when sober issues touched her, set her thinking, made her
+talk in fiery ardours.  Aunt Ailie gloried in that rapid growth; Aunt
+Bell lamented, and spoke of brains o’ertaxed and fevered, and studies
+that were dangerous.  She made up her mind a score of times to go herself
+to Edinburgh and give a warning to the teachers; but the weeks passed,
+and the months, and by-and-by the years, till almost three were gone, and
+the Edinburgh part of Lennox’s education was drawing to a close, and the
+warning visit was still to pay.
+
+It was then, one Easter, came The Macintosh.
+
+Bell and Ailie were out that afternoon for their daily walk in the woods
+or along the shore, when Mr Dyce returned from the Sheriff Court alert
+and buoyant, feeling much refreshed at the close of an encounter with a
+lawyer who, he used to say, was better at debating than himself, having
+more law books in his possession and a louder voice.  Letting himself in
+with his pass-key, he entered the parlour, and was astonished to find a
+stranger, who rose at his approach and revealed a figure singular though
+not unpleasing.  There was something ludicrous in her manner as she moved
+a step or two from the chair in which she had been sitting.  Small, and
+silver-grey in the hair, with a cheek that burned—it must be with
+embarrassment—between a rather sallow neck and sunken temples, and
+wearing smoked spectacles with rims of tortoise-shell, she would have
+attracted attention anywhere even if her dress had been less queer.
+Queer it was, but in what manner Daniel Dyce was not the person to
+distinguish.  To him there was about it nothing definitely peculiar,
+except that the woman wore a crinoline, a Paisley shawl of silken white,
+and such a bonnet as he had not seen since Grandma Buntain’s time.
+
+“Be seated, ma’am,” said he; “I did not know I had the honour of a
+visitor,” and he gave a second, keener glance, that swept the baffling
+figure from the flounced green poplin to the snow-white lappet of her
+bonnet.  A lady certainly,—that was in the atmosphere, however odd might
+be her dress.  “Where in the world has this one dropped from?” he asked
+himself, and waited an explanation.
+
+“Oh, Mr Dyce!” said the lady in a high, shrill voice, that plainly told
+she never came from south of the Border, and with a certain trepidation
+in her manner; “I’m feared I come at an inconvenient time to ye, and I
+maybe should hae bided at your office; but they tell’t me ye were out at
+what they ca’d a Pleading Diet.  I’ve come about my mairrage.”
+
+“Your marriage!” said the lawyer, scarcely hiding his surprise.
+
+“Yes, my mairrage!” she repeated sharply, drawing the silken shawl about
+her shoulders, bridling.  “There’s naething droll, I hope and trust, in a
+maiden lady ca’in’ on a writer for his help about her settlements!”
+
+“Not at all—not at all, ma’am,” said Daniel Dyce.  “I’m honoured in your
+confidence.”  And he pushed his spectacles up on his brow that he might
+see her less distinctly and have the less inclination to laugh at such an
+eccentric figure.
+
+She broke into a torrent of explanation.  “Ye must excuse me, Mr Dyce, if
+I’m put-about and gey confused, for it’s little I’m acquent wi’ lawyers.
+A’ my days I’ve heard o’ naething but their quirks, for they maistly
+rookit my grandfaither.  And I cam’ wi’ the coach frae Maryfield, and my
+heart’s in a palpitation wi’ sic briengin’ and bangin’ ower heughs and
+hills—”  She placed a mittened hand on a much-laced stomacher, and sighed
+profoundly.
+
+“Perhaps—perhaps a glass of wine—” began the lawyer, with his eye on the
+bell-pull, and a notion in his head that wine and a little seed-cake
+someway went with crinolines and the age of the Paisley shawl.
+
+“No, no!” she cried extravagantly.  “I never lip it; I’m—I’m in the Band
+o’ Hope.”
+
+The lawyer started, and scanned her again through his glasses, with a
+genial chuckling crow.  “So’s most maiden ladies, ma’am,” said he.  “I’m
+glad to congratulate you on your hopes being realised.”
+
+“It remains to be seen,” said the visitor.  “Gude kens what may be the
+upshot.  The maist deleeberate mairrage maun be aye a lottery, as my
+Auntie Grizel o’ the Whinhill used to say; and I canna plead that mine’s
+deleeberate, for the man just took a violent fancy the very first nicht
+he set his een on me, fell whummlin’ at my feet, and wasna to be put aff
+wi’ ‘No’ or ‘Maybe.’  We’re a puir weak sex, Mr Dyce, and men’s sae
+domineerin’!”
+
+She ogled him through her clouded glasses: her arch smile showed a
+blemish of two front teeth amissing.  He gave a nod of sympathy, and she
+was off again.  “And to let ye ken the outs and ins o’t, Mr Dyce, there’s
+a bit o’ land near Perth that’s a’ that’s left o’ a braw estate my
+forebears squandered in the Darien.  What I want to ken is, if I winna
+could hinder him that’s my _fiancé_ frae dicin’ or drinkin’ ’t awa’ ance
+he got me mairried to him?  I wad be sair vexed at ony such calamity, for
+my family hae aye been barons.”
+
+“Ance a baron aye a baron,” said the lawyer, dropping into her own broad
+Scots.
+
+“Yes, Mr Dyce, that’s a’ very fine; but baron or baroness, if there’s sic
+a thing, ’s no great figure wantin’ a bit o’ grun’ to gang wi’ the title;
+and John Cleghorn—that’s my intended’s name—has been a gey throughither
+chiel in his time by a’ reports, and I doubt wi’ men it’s the aulder the
+waur.”
+
+“I hope in this case it’ll be the aulder the wiser, Miss—” said the
+lawyer, and hung unheeded on the note of interrogation.
+
+“I’ll run nae risks if I can help it,” said the lady emphatically; “and
+I’ll no’ put my trust in the Edinburgh lawyers either: they’re a’ tarred
+wi’ the ae stick, or I sair misjudge them.  But I’m veesitin’ a cousin
+owerby at Maryfield, and I’m tell’t there’s no’ a man that’s mair
+dependable in a’ the shire than yoursel’, so I just cam’ ower ains errand
+for a consultation.  Oh, that unco’ coach! the warld’s gane wud, Mr Dyce,
+wi’ hurry and stramash, and Scotland’s never been the same since—  But
+there! I’m awa’ frae my story; if it’s the Lord’s will that I’m to marry
+Johnny Cleghorn, what comes o’ Kaims?  Will he be owner o’t?”
+
+“Certainly not, ma’am,” said Mr Dyce, with a gravity well preserved
+considering his inward feelings.  “Even before the Married Women’s
+Property Act, his _jus mariti_, as we ca’ it, gave him only his wife’s
+personal and moveable estate.  There is no such thing as _communio
+bonorum_—as community of goods—between husband and wife in Scotland.”
+
+“And he canna sell Kaims on me?”
+
+“No; it’s yours and your assigns _ad perpetuam remanentiam_, being feudal
+right.”
+
+“I wish ye wad speak in honest English, like mysel’, Mr Dyce,” said the
+lady sharply.  “I’ve forgotten a’ my Laiten, and the very sound o’t gars
+my heid bizz.  I doubt it’s the lawyer’s way o’ gettin’ round puir
+helpless bodies.”
+
+“It’s scarcely that,” said Mr Dyce, laughing.  “It’s the only chance we
+get to air auld Mr Trayner, and it’s thought to be imposin’.  _Ad
+perpetuam remanentiam_ just means to remain for ever.”
+
+“I thocht that maybe John might hae the poo’er to treat Kaims as my
+tocher.”
+
+“Even if he had,” said Mr Dyce, “a _dot_, or _dos_, or tocher, in the
+honest law of Scotland, was never the price o’ the husband’s hand; he
+could only use the fruits o’t.  He is not entitled to dispose of it, and
+must restore it intact if unhappily the marriage should at any time be
+dissolved.”
+
+“Dissolved!” cried the lady.  “Fegs! ye’re in an awfu’ hurry, and the
+ring no’ bought yet.  Supposin’ I was deein’ first?”
+
+“In that case I presume that you would have the succession settled on
+your husband.”
+
+“On Johnny Cleghorn!  Catch me!  There’s sic a thing as—as—as bairns, Mr
+Dyce,” and the lady simpered coyly, while the lawyer rose hurriedly to
+fumble with some books and hide his confusion at such a wild conjecture.
+He was relieved by the entrance of Bell and Ailie, who stood amazed at
+the sight of the odd and unexpected visitor.
+
+“My sisters,” said the lawyer hastily.  “Miss—Miss—I did not catch the
+name.”
+
+“Miss Macintosh,” said the stranger nervously, and Bell cried out
+immediately, “I was perfectly assured of it!  Lennox has often spoken of
+you, and I’m so glad to see you.  I did not know you were in the
+neighbourhood.”
+
+Ailie was delighted with so picturesque a figure.  She could scarcely
+keep her eyes off the many-flounced, expansive gown of poplin, the
+stomacher, the ponderous ear-rings, the great cameo brooch, the long lace
+mittens, the Paisley shawl, the neat poke-bonnet, and the fresh old face
+marred only by the spectacles, and the gap where the teeth were missing.
+
+“I have just been consultin’ Mr Dyce on my comin’ mairrage,” said The
+Macintosh; and at this intelligence from a piece of such antiquity Miss
+Bell’s face betrayed so much astonishment that Dan and Ailie almost
+forgot their good manners.
+
+“Oh! if it’s business—” said Bell, and rose to go; but The Macintosh put
+a hand on her sleeve and stayed her.
+
+“Ye needna fash to leave, Miss Dyce,” said she.  “A’thing’s settled.  It
+seems that Johnny Cleghorn canna ca’ a rig o’ Kaims his ain when he
+mairries me, and that was a’ I cam’ to see about.  Oh, it’s a mischancy
+thing a mairrage, Miss Dyce; maist folk gang intill’t heels-ower-hurdies,
+but I’m in an awfu’ swither, and havena a mither to guide me.”
+
+“Keep me!” said Miss Bell, out of all patience at such maidenly
+apprehensions, “ye’re surely auld enough to ken your ain mind.  I hope
+the guidman’s worthy.”
+
+“He’s no’ that ill—as men-folk gang,” said The Macintosh resignedly.
+“He’s as fat’s creish, and has a craighlin’ cough, the body, and he’s
+faur frae bonny, and he hasna a bawbee o’ his ain, and sirs! what a
+reputation!  But a man’s a man, Miss Dyce, and time’s aye fleein’.”
+
+At such a list of disabilities in a husband the Dyces lost all sense of
+the proprieties and broke into laughter, in which the lady joined them,
+shaking in her arm-chair.  Bell was the first to recover with a guilty
+sense that this was very bad for Daniel’s business.  She straightened her
+face and was about to make apologies, when Footles bounded in at the open
+door, to throw himself at the feet of The Macintosh and wave a joyous
+tail.  But he was not content there.  In spite of her resistance, he must
+be in her lap, and then, for the first time, Bell and Ailie noticed a
+familiar cadence in the stranger’s laugh.
+
+Dan rose and clapped her on the back.  “Well done, Bud!” said he.  “Ye
+had us a’; but Footles wasna to be swindled wi’ an auld wife’s goon,” and
+he gently drew the spectacles from the laughing eyes of his naughty
+niece!
+
+“Oh, you rogue!” cried Auntie Ailie.
+
+“You wretch!” cried Auntie Bell.  “I might have known your cantrips.
+Where in the world did you get these clothes?”
+
+Bud sailed across the room like a cutter yacht and put her arms about her
+neck.  “Didn’t you know me?” she asked.
+
+“How could I know you, dressed up like that?  And your teeth—you imp!
+they’re blackened; and your neck—you jad! it’s painted; and—oh, lassie,
+lassie!  Awa’! awa’! the deil’s ower grit wi’ ye!”
+
+“Didn’t _you_ know me, Aunt Ailie?” asked Bud.
+
+“Not in the least,” said Ailie, taking the droll old figure in her arms.
+“Perhaps I might have known you if I didn’t think it was to-morrow you
+were coming.”
+
+“It was to have been to-morrow; but the measles have broken out in
+school, and I came a day earlier, and calculated I’d just hop in and
+surprise you all.  Didn’t you guess, Uncle Dan?”
+
+“Not at first,” said he.  “I’ll admit I was fairly deceived, but when you
+talked about being in the Band of Hope I saw at a shot through The
+Macintosh.  I hope you liked my Latin, Bud.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+“YOU surely did not come in these daft-like garments all the way from
+Edinburgh?” asked her Auntie Bell, when the wig had been removed and
+Bud’s youth was otherwise resumed.
+
+“Not at all!” said Bud, sparkling with the success of her deception.  “I
+came almost enough of a finished young lady to do you credit, but when I
+found there was nobody in the house except Kate, I felt I couldn’t get a
+better chance to introduce you to The Macintosh if I waited for a year.
+I told you we’d been playing charades last winter at the school, and I
+got Jim to send me some make-up, the wig, and this real ’cute old lady’s
+dress.  They were all in my box to give you some fun sometime, and Kate
+helped me hook things, though she was mighty scared to think how angry
+you might be, Aunt Bell; and when I was ready for you she said she’d be
+sure to laugh fit to burst, and then you’d see it was only me dressed up,
+and Footles he barked, so he looked like giving the show away, so I sent
+them both out into the garden and sat in a stage-fright that almost shook
+my ear-rings off.  I tell you I felt mighty poorly sitting there
+wondering what on earth I was to say; but by-and-by I got to be so much
+The Macintosh I felt almost sure enough her to have the rheumatism, and
+knew I could fix up gags to keep the part going.  I didn’t expect Uncle
+Dan would be the first to come in, or I wouldn’t have felt so brave about
+it, he’s so sharp and suspicious—that’s with being a lawyer, I s’pose,
+they’re a’ tarred wi’ the ae stick, Miss Macintosh says; and when he
+talked all that solemn Latin stuff and looked like running up a bill for
+law advice that would ruin me, I laughed inside enough to ache.  Now
+_amn’t_ I just the very wickedest girl, Uncle Dan?”
+
+“A little less Scotch and a more plausible story would have made the
+character perfect,” said her uncle.  “Where did you get them both?  Miss
+Macintosh was surely not the only model?”
+
+“Well, she’s not so Scotch as I made out, except when she’s very
+sentimental, but I felt she’d have to be as Scotch as the mountain and
+the flood to fit these clothes; and she’s never talked about marrying
+anybody herself, but she’s making a match just now for a cousin of hers,
+and tells us all about it.  I was partly her, but not enough to be unkind
+or mean, and partly her cousin, and a little bit of the Waverley
+Novels,—in fact, I was pure mosaic, like our dog.  There wasn’t enough
+real quaint about Miss Macintosh for ordinary to make a front scene
+monologue go, but she’s fuller of hints than—than a dictionary, and once
+I started I felt I could play half a dozen Macintoshes all different,
+so’s you’d actually think she was a surging crowd.  You see there’s the
+Jacobite Macintosh, and the ‘aboaminable’ English Macintosh, and the
+flirting Macintosh who raps Herr Laurent with her fan, and the
+fortune-telling Macintosh who reads palms and tea-cup leaves, and the
+dancing and deportment Macintosh who knows all the first families in
+Scotland.”
+
+Bud solemnly counted off the various Macintoshes on her finger-tips.
+
+“We’ll have every one of them when you come home next winter,” said Miss
+Ailie.  “I’d prefer it to the opera.”
+
+“I can’t deny but it’s diverting,” said Miss Bell; “still, it’s
+dreadfully like play-acting, and hardly the thing for a sober dwelling.
+Lassie, lassie, away this instant and change yourself!”
+
+If prizes and Italian songs had really been the proof that Bud had taken
+on the polish, she would have disappointed Uncle Dan, but this art of
+hers was enough to make full amends, it gave so much diversion.
+Character roused and held her interest; she had a lightning eye for
+oddities of speech and gesture.  Most of a man’s philosophy is in a
+favourite phrase, his individuality is betrayed in the way he carries his
+hat along the aisle on Sunday.  Bud, each time that she came home from
+Edinburgh, collected phrases as others do postage-stamps, and knew how
+every hat in town was carried.  Folk void of idiosyncrasy, having the
+natural self restrained by watchfulness and fear, were the only ones
+whose company she wearied of; all others she studied with delight,
+storing of each some simulacrum in her memory.  Had she reproduced them
+in a way to make them look ridiculous she would have roused the Dyces’
+disapproval, but lacking any sense of superiority she made no
+impersonation look ignoble; the portraits in her gallery, like Raeburn’s,
+borrowed a becoming curl or two and toned down crimson noses.
+
+But her favourite character was The Macintosh in one of the countless
+phases that at last were all her own invention, and far removed from the
+original.  Each time she came home, the dancing-mistress they had never
+really seen became a more familiar personage to the Dyces.  “I declare,”
+cried Bell, “I’m beginning to think of you always as a droll old body.”
+“And how’s the rheumatism?” Dan would ask; it was “The Macintosh said
+this” or “The Macintosh said that” with Ailie; and even Kate would quote
+the dancing-mistress with such earnestness, that the town became familiar
+with the name and character without suspecting they were often merely
+parts assumed by young Miss Lennox.
+
+Bud carried the joke one night to daring lengths by going as Miss
+Macintosh with Ailie to a dance, in a gown and pelerine of Grandma
+Buntain’s that had made tremendous conquests eighty years before.
+
+Our dances at the inn are not like city routs: Petronella, La Tempête,
+and the reel have still an honoured place in them; we think the joy of
+life is not meant wholly for the young and silly, and so the elderly
+attend them.  We sip claret-cup and tea in the alcove or “adjacent,” and
+gossip together if our dancing days are done, or sit below the flags and
+heather, humming “Merrily danced the quaker’s wife,” with an approving
+eye on our bonny daughters.  Custom gives the Provost and his lady a
+place of honour in the alcove behind the music: here is a petty court
+where the civic spirit pays its devoirs, where the lockets are large and
+strong, and hair-chains much abound, and mouths before the mellowing
+midnight hour are apt to be a little mim.
+
+Towards the alcove, Ailie—Dan discreetly moving elsewhere—boldly led The
+Macintosh, whose ballooning silk brocade put even the haughtiest of the
+other dames in shadow.  She swam across the floor as if her hoops and not
+her buckled shoon sustained her, as if she moved on air.
+
+“Dod! here’s a character!” said Dr Brash, pulling down his waistcoat.
+“Where have the Dyces gotten her?”
+
+“The Ark is landed,” said the Provost’s lady.  “What a peculiar
+creature!”
+
+Ailie gravely gave the necessary introductions, and soon the notable Miss
+Macintosh of Kaims was the lion of the assembly.  She flirted most
+outrageously with the older beaux, sharing roguish smiles and taps of the
+fan between them, and, compelling unaccustomed gallantries, set their
+wives all laughing.  They drank wine with her in the old style; she met
+them glass for glass in water.
+
+“And I’ll gie ye a toast now,” she said, when her turn came—“Scotland’s
+Rights,” raising her glass of water with a dramatic gesture.
+
+“Dod! the auld body’s got an arm on her,” whispered Dr Brash to Colin
+Cleland, seeing revealed the pink plump flesh between the short sleeves
+and the top of the mittens.
+
+They drank the sentiment—the excuse for the glass was good enough, though
+in these prosaic days a bit mysterious.
+
+“What are they?” asked the Provost.
+
+“What are what?” said The Macintosh.
+
+“Scotland’s Rights.”
+
+“I’ll leave it to my frien’ Mr Dyce to tell ye,” she said quickly, for
+the lawyer had now joined the group.  “It’ll aiblins cost ye 6s. 8d., but
+for that I daresay he can gie ye them in the Laiten.  But—but I hope
+we’re a’ friens here?” she exclaimed with a hurried glance round her
+company.  “I hope we have nane o’ thae aboaminable English amang us.  I
+canna thole them!  It has been a sair dooncome for Scotland since ever
+she drew in wi’ them.”  For a space she dwelt on themes of rather antique
+patriotism that made her audience smile, for in truth in this burgh town
+we see no difference between Scotch and English: in our calculations
+there are only the lucky folk, born, bred, and dwelling within the sound
+of Will Oliver’s bell, and the poor souls who have to live elsewhere, all
+equally unfortunate, whether they be English, Irish, or Scots.
+
+“But here I’m keepin’ you gentlemen frae your dancin’,” she said,
+interrupting herself, and consternation fell on her company, for sets
+were being formed for a quadrille, and her innuendo was unmistakable.
+She looked from one to the other of them as if enjoying their
+discomfiture.
+
+“I—I—I haven’t danced, myself, for years,” said the Provost, which was
+true; and Colin Cleland, sighing deeply in his prominent profile and
+hiding his feet, protested quadrilles were beyond him.  The younger men
+quickly remembered other engagements and disappeared.  “Will you do me
+the honour?” said Dr Brash—good man! a gentle hero’s heart was under that
+wrinkled waistcoat.
+
+“Oh!” said The Macintosh, rising to his arm, “you’ll be sure and no’ to
+swing me aff my feet, for I’m but a frail and giddy creature.”
+
+“It would be but paying you back,” said the Doctor, bowing.  “Miss
+Macintosh has been swinging us a’ aff our feet since she entered the
+room.”
+
+She laughed behind her clouded glasses, tapped him lightly with her fan,
+and swam into the opening movement of the figure.  The word’s abused, yet
+I can but say she danced divinely, with such grace, lightness of foot,
+and rhythm of the body that folk stared at her in admiration and
+incredulity: her carriage, seen from behind, came perilously near
+betraying her, and possibly her partner might have soon discovered who he
+had, even if she had not made him a confession.
+
+“Upon my word!” said he, in a pause between the figures,—“Upon my word!
+you dance magnificently, Miss Macintosh.  I must apologise for such a
+stiff old partner as you’ve gotten.”
+
+“I micht weel dance,” said she.  “You ken I’m a dancin’-mistress?”  Then
+she whispered hurriedly in her natural voice to him.  “I feel real bold,
+Dr Brash, to be dancing with you here when I haven’t come out yet, and I
+feel real mean to be deceiving you, who would dance with an old frump
+just because you’re sorry for her, and I _can’t_ do it one minute longer.
+Don’t you know me, really?”
+
+“Good Lord!” said he in an undertone, aghast.  “Miss Lennox!”
+
+“Only for you,” she whispered.  “Please don’t tell anybody else.”
+
+“You beat all,” he told her.  “I suppose I’m making myself ridiculous
+dancing away here with—h’m!—auld langsyne, but faith I have the advantage
+now of the others, and you mustn’t let on when the thing comes out that I
+did not know you from the outset.  I have a crow to pick with Miss Ailie
+about this—the rogue!  But, young woman, it’s an actress you are!”
+
+“Not yet, but it’s an actress I mean to be,” she said, pousetting with
+him.
+
+“H’m!” said he, “there seems the natural gift for it, but once on a time
+I made up my mind it was to be poetry.”
+
+“I’ve got over poetry,” she said.  “I found I was only one of that kind
+of poets who always cut it up in fourteen-line lengths and begin with ‘As
+when.’  No, it’s to be the stage, Dr Brash; I guess God’s fixed it.”
+
+“Whiles He is—h’m—injudicious,” said the Doctor.  “But what about Aunt
+Bell?”
+
+“There’s no buts about it, though I admit I’m worried to think of Auntie
+Bell.  She considers acting is almost as bad as lying, and talks about
+the theatre as Satan’s abode.  If it wasn’t that she was from home
+to-night, I daren’t have been here.  I wish—I wish I didn’t love her
+so—almost—for I feel I’ve got to vex her pretty bad.”
+
+“Indeed you have!” said Dr Brash.  “And you’ve spoiled my dancing, for
+I’ve a great respect for that devoted little woman.”
+
+Back in the alcove The Macintosh found more to surround her than ever,
+though it was the penalty of her apparent age that they were readier to
+joke than dance with her.  Captain Consequence, wanting a wife with
+money, if and when his mother should be taken from him, never lost a
+chance to see how a pompous manner and his medals would affect strange
+ladies.  He was so marked in his attention, and created such amusement to
+the company, that, pitying him, and fearful of her own deception, she
+proposed to tell fortunes.  The ladies brought her their emptied teacups;
+the men solemnly laid their palms before her; she divined, for all, their
+past and future in a practised way that astonished her uncle and aunt,
+who, afraid of some awkward sally, had kept aloof at first from her
+levee, but now were the most interested of her audience.
+
+Over the leaves in Miss Minto’s cup she frowned through her clouded
+glasses.  “There’s lots o’ money,” said she, “and a braw house, and a
+muckle garden wi’ bees and trees in’t, and a wheen boys speilin’ the
+wa’s—you may be aye assured o’ bien circumstances, Miss Minto.”
+
+Miss Minto, warmly conscious of the lawyer at her back, could have wished
+for a fortune less prosaic.
+
+“Look again; is there no’ a man to keep the laddies awa’?” suggested the
+Provost, pawky body!
+
+“I declare there is!” cried The Macintosh, taking the hint.  “See; there!
+he’s under this tree, a’ huddled up in an awfu’ passion.”
+
+“I can’t make out his head,” said the Provost’s lady.
+
+“Some men hae nane,” retorted the spaewife; “but what’s to hinder ye
+imaginin’ it like me?”
+
+“Oh! if it’s imagination,” said the Provost’s lady, “I can hear him
+swearin’.  And now, what’s my cup?”
+
+“I see here,” said The Macintosh, “a kind o’ island far at sea, and a
+ship sailin’ frae’t this way, wi’ flags to the mast-heid, and a man on
+board.”
+
+“I hope he’s well, then,” said the Provost’s lady, “for that’s our James,
+and he’s coming from Barbadoes: we had a letter just last week.  Indeed
+you’re a perfect wizard!”  She had forgotten that her darling James’s
+coming was the talk of the town for ten days back.
+
+Colin Cleland, rubicund, good-natured, with his shyness gone, next
+proffered his palm to read.  His hand lay like a plaice, inelegant and
+large, in hers, whose fresh young beauty might have roused suspicion in
+observers less carried away in the general illusion.
+
+“Ah! sir,” said she with a sigh, “ye hae had your trials!”
+
+“Mony a ane, ma’am,” said the jovial Colin.  “I was ance a lawyer, for my
+sins.”
+
+“That’s no’ the kind o’ trial I mean,” said The Macintosh.  “Here’s a
+wheen o’ auld tribulations.”
+
+“Perhaps you’re richt, ma’am,” he admitted.  “I hae a sorry lot o’ them
+marked doon in auld diaries, but gude-be-thanked I canna mind them unless
+I look them up.  They werena near sae mony as the rattlin’ ploys I’ve
+had.”
+
+“Is there no’ a wife for Mr Cleland?” said the Provost—pawky, pawky man!
+
+“There was ance, I see, a girl, and she was the richt girl too,” said The
+Macintosh.
+
+“Yes, but I was the wrang man,” said Colin Cleland, drawing his hand
+away, and nobody laughed, for all but The Macintosh knew that story and
+made it some excuse for foolish habits.
+
+“I’m a bit of a warlock myself,” said Dr Brash, beholding the spaewife’s
+vexation at a _faux-pas_ she only guessed herself guilty of.  “I’ll read
+your loof, Miss Macintosh, if ye let me.”
+
+They all insisted she should submit herself to the Doctor’s unusual art,
+and taking her hand in his he drew the mitten off and pretended to scan
+the lines.
+
+“Travel—h’m—a serious illness—h’m—your life, in youth, was quite
+adventurous, Miss Macintosh.”
+
+“Oh! I’m no’ that auld yet,” she corrected him.  “There’s mony a chance
+at fifty.  Never mind my past, Dr Brash, what about my future?”
+
+He glanced up a moment and saw her aunt and uncle listening in amusement,
+unaware as yet that he knew the secret, then scanned her palm again.
+
+“The future—h’m! let me see.  A long line of life; heart line
+healthy—h’m—the best of your life’s before you, though I cannot say it
+may be the happiest part of it.  Perhaps my—h’m—my skill a little fails
+here.  You have a strong will, Miss—Miss Macintosh, and I doubt in this
+world you’ll aye have your own way.  And—h’m—an odd destiny surely ’s
+before you—I see the line of Fame, won—h’m—in a multitude of characters;
+by the Lord Hairry, ma’am, you’re to be—you’re to be an actress!”
+
+The company laughed at such a prophecy for one so antiquated, and the
+Doctor’s absurdity put an end to the spaeing of fortunes, but he had
+effected his purpose.  He had found the words that expressed the hope,
+half-entertained, so far, of Ailie, and the fear of her brother Dan.
+They learned before they left that he had not spoken without his cue, yet
+it was a little saddened they went home at midnight with their ward in
+masquerade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+FORTUNATELY Kate’s marriage came to distract them for a while from the
+thought of Bud’s future.  The essential house had been found that was
+suitable for a captain, yet not too dearly rented,—a piece of luck in a
+community where dwellings are rarely vacant, and every tenant over eighty
+years of age has the uneasy consciousness that half a dozen pairs
+betrothed have already decided upon a different colour of paint for his
+windows, and have become resigned, with a not unpleasing melancholy, to
+the thought that in the course of nature his time cannot be long.
+
+The Captain—that once roving eagle-heart subdued by love for the maid of
+Colonsay—so persistently discouraged any yachting trips which took the
+_Wave_ for more than a night or two from her moorings, that Lady Anne and
+her husband, knowing the heart themselves, recommended immediate
+marriage; and Miss Bell, in consequence, was scouring the countryside for
+Kate’s successor in the kitchen, but hopeless of coming on one who could
+cook good kail, have a cheery face, and be a strict communicant.  “I can
+get fine cooks that are wanting in the grace of God, and pious girls who
+couldn’t be trusted to bake a Christian scone,” she said; “it’s a choice
+between two evils.”
+
+“Of two evils choose the third, then,” said Dan to his sister, flushed
+and exhilarated by a search that, for elderly maiden ladies, makes up for
+an older hunt.  “The sport’s agreeing with you.”
+
+It was a great distress to Bud that the wedding should take place in the
+house and not in church, as seemed most fitting.  She felt a private
+ceremony deprived her of a spectacle, with Miss Amelia Duff playing the
+wedding march on the harmonium, and the audience filing up the aisle in
+their Sunday clothes, the carriage of their hats revealing character.
+
+“Why, you’re simply going to make it look like a plain tea!” she
+protested.  “If it was my marriage, Kate, I’d have it as solemn and grand
+as Harvest Sunday.  A body doesn’t get married to a man in brass buttons
+every other day, and it’s a chance for style.”
+
+“We never have our weddings in the church,” said Kate.  “Sometimes the
+gentry do, but it’s not considered nice; it’s kind of Roman Catholic.
+Forbye, in a church, where would you get the fun?”
+
+If Bud hadn’t realised that fun was the main thing at Scottish weddings,
+she got hints of it in Kate’s preparation.  Croodles and hysterics took
+possession of the bride: she was sure she would never get through the
+ceremony with her life, or she would certainly do something silly that
+would make the whole world laugh at her and dreadfully vex the Captain.
+Even her wedding-dress, whose prospect had filled her dreams with
+gladness, but deepened her depression when it came from the
+manteau-makers: she wept sad stains on the front width, and the
+orange-blossom they rehearsed with might have been a wreath of the bitter
+rue.  Bud wanted her to try the dress on, but the bride was aghast at
+such an unlucky proposition; so she tried it on herself, with sweet
+results, if one did not look at the gathers in the back.  They practised
+the ceremony the night before, Kate’s sister from Colonsay (who was to be
+her bridesmaid) playing the part of a tall, brass-buttoned bridegroom.
+
+“Oh, Kate!” cried Bud pitifully, “you stand there like’s you were a
+soda-water bottle and the cork lost.  My goodness! brisk up a bit.  If
+it’s hard on you, just remember it isn’t much of a joke for Charles.
+Don’t you know the eyes a the public are on you?”
+
+“That’s just it,” said poor Kate.  “I wouldn’t be frightened a bit if it
+wasn’t for that, for I’m so brave.  What do you do with your hands?”
+
+“You just keep hold of them.  Mercy! don’t let them hang like
+that,—they’re yours; up till now he’s got nothing to do with them.  Now
+for the tears—where’s your handkerchief?  That one’s yards too big, and
+there isn’t an edge of lace to peek through, but it’ll do this time.
+It’ll all be right on the night.  Now the minister’s speaking, and you’re
+looking down at the carpet and you’re timid and fluttered and nervous and
+thinking what an epoch this is in your sinful life, and how you won’t be
+Kate MacNeill any more but Mrs Charles Maclean, and the Lord knows if you
+will be happy with him—”
+
+The bride blubbered and threw her apron over her head as usual: Bud was
+in despair.
+
+“Well, you are a silly!” she exclaimed.  “All you want is a gentle tear
+or two trickling down the side of your nose, enough to make your eyes
+blink but not enough to soak your veil or leave streaks.  And there you
+gush like a waterspout, and damp your face so much the bridegroom’ll
+catch his death of cold when he kisses you!  Stop it, Kate MacNeill,—it
+isn’t anybody’s funeral: why, weddings aren’t so very fatal; lots of folk
+get over them—leastways in America.”
+
+“I can’t help it!” protested the weeping maid.  “I never could be
+melancholy in moderation, and the way you speak you make me think it’s
+running a dreadful risk to marry anybody.”
+
+“Well,” said Bud, “you needn’t think of things so harrowing, I suppose.
+Just squeeze your eyes together and bite your lip, and perhaps it’ll
+start a tear: if it don’t, it’ll look like as if you were bravely
+struggling with emotion.  And then there’s the proud glad smile as you
+back out on Charles’s arm—give her your arm, Minnie,—the trial’s over,
+you know, and you’ve got on a lovely new plain ring, and all the other
+girls are envious, and Charles Maclean and you are one till death do you
+part.  Oh, Kate, Kate! don’t grin; that’s not a smile, it’s a—it’s a
+railroad track.  Look—”  Bud assumed a smile that spoke of gladness and
+humility, confidence and a maiden’s fears,—a smile that appealed and
+charmed.
+
+“I couldn’t smile like that to save my life,” said Kate in a despair.  “I
+wish you had learned me that instead of the height of Popacatthekettle.
+Do you think he’ll be angry if I don’t do them things properly?”
+
+“Who? Charles!  Why, Charles’ll be so mortally scared himself he wouldn’t
+notice if you made faces at him, or were a different girl altogether.
+He’ll have a dull dead booming in his ears, and wonder whether it’s
+wedding-day or apple-custard: all of them I’ve seen married looked like
+that.  It’s not for Charles you should weep and smile; it’s for the front
+of the house, you know,—it’s for the people looking on.”
+
+“Toots!” said Kate, relieved.  “If it’s only for them, I needn’t bother.
+I thought that maybe it was something truly refined that he would be
+expecting.  It’s not—it’s not the front of a house I’m marrying.  Tell me
+this and tell me no more—is there anything special I should do to please
+my Charles?”
+
+“I don’t think I’d worry,” said Bud on reflection.  “I daresay it’s
+better not to think of anything dramatic.  If I were you I’d just keep
+calm as grass, and pray the Lord to give me a good contented mind and
+hurry up the clergyman.”
+
+But yet was the maiden full of a consciousness of imperfection, since she
+had seen that day the bride’s-cake on view in the baker’s window,—an
+edifice of art so splendid that she felt she could never be worthy of it.
+“How do you think I’ll look?” she asked.  And Bud assured her she would
+look magnificently lovely.
+
+“Oh, I wish I did,” she sighed.  “But I’m feared I’ll not look so lovely
+as I think I do.”
+
+“No girl ever did,” said Bud.  “That’s impossible; but when Charles comes
+to and sits up he’ll think you’re It: he’ll think you perfect.”
+
+“Indeed I’m far from that,” said Kate.  “I have just my health and napery
+and a liking for the chap, and I wish I wasn’t near so red.”
+
+Bud was able to instruct her in the right deportment for a bride, but had
+no experience in the management of husbands: for that Kate had to take
+some hints from her mistress, who was under the delusion that her brother
+Dan was the standard of his sex.
+
+“They’re curious creatures,” Bell confided.  “You must have patience, ay,
+and humour them.  They’ll trot at your heels like pussy for a
+cheese-pudding, but they’ll not be driven.  If I had a man I would never
+thwart him.  If he was out of temper or unreasonable I would tell him he
+was looking ill, and that would make him feared and humble.  When a man
+thinks he’s ill, his trust must be in the Lord and in his woman-kind.
+That’s where we have the upper hand of them!  First and last, the thing’s
+to be agreeable.  You’ll find he’ll never put anything in its proper
+place, and that’s a heartbreak, but it’s not so bad as if he broke the
+dishes and blackened your eyes, the way they do in the newspapers.
+There’s one thing that’s the secret of a happy home—to live in the fear
+of God and within your income, faith! you can’t live very well without
+it.”
+
+“Oh, mem! it’s a desperate thing a wedding,” said the maid.  “I never, in
+all my life, had so much to think about before.”
+
+There were stricken lads in these days!  The more imminent became her
+utter loss, the more desirable Kate became.  But sentiment in country
+towns is an accommodating thing, and all the old suitors—the whistlers in
+the close and purveyors of conversation lozenges—found consolation in the
+fun at the wedding, and danced their griefs away on the flags of the
+Dyces’ kitchen.
+
+A noble wedding!  All the cookery skill of Kate and her mistress was
+expended on it, and discretion, for the sake of the incredulous, forbids
+enumeration of the roasted hens.  Chanticleers in the town crowed roupily
+and ruefully for months thereafter.  The bridegroom might have stepped
+over the wall to the wedding chamber, or walked to it in a hundred paces
+up the lane: he rode instead in a carriage that made a stately and
+circuitous approach round John Turner’s Corner, and wished the distance
+had been twenty times as long.  “It’s not that I’m feared,” said he, “or
+that I’ve rued the gyurl, but—but it’s kind of sudden!”—a curious
+estimate of a courtship that had started in the burial-ground of Colonsay
+so many years before!
+
+A noble wedding—its revelry kept the town awake till morning.  From the
+open windows the night was filled with dancing tunes, and songs, and
+laughter; boys cried “Fab, fab!” in the street, and a fairy lady—really a
+lady all grown up, alas!—stood at a window and showered pence among them.
+
+Long before the wedding-party ended, Bud went up to bed, but she lay for
+hours awake in the camceil room hearing the revelry of the kitchen.  She
+had said good-bye to the blissful pair whose wedding was the consequence
+of her own daft pranks as letter-writer: she would miss the maid of
+Colonsay.  The knowledge that ’tis an uncertain world, a place of change
+and partings, comes to us all sooner or later in one flash of
+apprehension and of grief: for the first time Bud felt the irrevocable
+nature of the past, and that her happy world under this roof was,
+someway, crumbling, and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+A hurried footstep sounded on the stairs, a rap came to her door, and the
+bride came in, unbid, in the darkness, whispering Lennox’s name.
+
+Her only answer was a sob from the girl in bed.
+
+“Miss Lennox!” said the bride distressed; “what ails you?  I’ve come up
+to say good-bye: it wasn’t a right good-bye at all with yon folk looking.
+Oh, Lennox, Lennox! _ghaol mo chridhe_! my heart is sore to be leaving
+you, for the two of us were so merry!  Now I have a man, and a good man
+too; it was you that gave me him, but I have lost my loving friend.”  She
+threw herself on the bed, regardless of her finery, and the Celtic fount
+of her swelled over in sobs and tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+IT took two maids to fill Kate’s place in the Dyces’ household—one for
+the plain boiling of potatoes and the other for her pious atmosphere, as
+the lawyer argued; and a period of discomfort attended on what Bell
+called their breaking-in.  No more kitchen nights for Lennox, now that
+she was a finished young lady and her friend was gone: she must sit in
+the parlour strumming canzonets on Grandma Buntain’s Broadwood, taming
+her heart of fire.  It was as a voice from heaven’s lift there came one
+day a letter from London in which Mrs Molyneux invited her and one of her
+aunts for an Easter holiday.
+
+“Indeed and I’ll be glad to be quit for a week or two of both of you,”
+said Bell to her niece and Ailie.  “Spring-cleaning, with a couple of
+stupid huzzies in the kitchen,—not but what they’re nice and willing
+lassies,—is like to be the sooner ended if we’re left to it ourselves.”
+
+A radiant visage and lips in firm control betrayed how Lennox felt.  She
+had never been in London—its cry went pealing through her heart.  Ailie
+said nothing, but marvelled how blithely and blindly her sister always
+set foot on the facile descent that led to her inevitable doom of
+deprivation and regret.
+
+“The Grand Tour!” said Uncle Dan; “it’s the fitting termination to your
+daft days, Lennox.  Up by at the Castle there’s a chariot with imperials
+that conveyed the Earl on his, the hammercloth most lamentably faded: I
+often wonder if his lordship takes a sly seat in it at times when no
+one’s looking, and climbs the Alps or clatters through Italian towns
+again when Jones the coachman is away at his tea.  It’s a thing I might
+do myself if I had made the Tour and still had the shandrydan.”
+
+“Won’t you really need me?” Aunt Ailie asked her sister, and half hoped,
+half feared spring-cleaning should postpone the holiday; but Bell
+maintained it should be now or never, more particularly as Lennox’s dress
+was new.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Oh, London, London! siren town! how it bewitched the girl!  Its cab-horse
+bells were fairy; its evening, as they entered, hung with a myriad magic
+moons and stars.  The far-stretching streets with their flaming jewel
+windows, the temples in the upper dusk, and the solemn squares crowding
+round country trees; the throngs of people, the odours of fruit-shops,
+the passion of flowers, the mornings silvery grey, and the multitudinous
+monuments rimed by years, thunder of hoofs in ways without end, and the
+silence of mighty parks,—Bud lay awake in the nights to think of them.
+
+Jim Molyneux had the siren by the throat: he loved her, and shook a
+living out of her hands.  At first she had seemed to him too old, too
+calm, too slow and stately as compared with his own Chicago, nor did she
+seem to have a place for any stranger: now he had found she could be
+bullied,—that a loud voice, a bold front, and the aid of a good tailor
+could compel her to disgorge respect and gold.  He had become the manager
+of a suburban theatre, where oranges were eaten in the stalls, and the
+play was as often as not “The Father’s Curse”; but once a day he walked
+past Thespian temples in the city, and, groaning at their mismanagement,
+planned an early future for himself with classic fronts of marble, and
+duchesses advertising him each night by standing in rows on the pavement
+awaiting their carriages.  Far along Grove Lane, where he dwelt in a
+pea-green house with nine French-bean rows and some clumps of bulbs
+behind, one could distinguish his coming by the smartness of his walk and
+the gleam of the sunshine on his hat.  He had one more secret of
+success—teetotalism.  “Scotch and soda,” he would say, “that’s what ails
+the boys, and makes ’em sleepier than Hank M’Cabe’s old tom-cat.  Good
+boys, dear boys, they’ve always got the long-lost-brother grip, but
+they’re mighty prone to dope assuagements for the all-gone feeling in the
+middle of the day.  When they’ve got cobwebs in their little
+brilliantined belfries, I’m full of the songs of spring and merry old
+England’s on the lee.  See? I don’t even need to grab; all I’ve got to do
+is to look deserving, and the stuff comes crowding in: it always does to
+a man who looks like ready-money, and don’t lunch on cocktails and
+cloves.”
+
+“Jim, boyette,” his wife would say, “I guess you’d better put ice or
+something on your bump of self-esteem;” but she proudly wore the jewels
+that were the rewards of his confidence and industry.
+
+Bud and Ailie, when they thought of home in these days, thought of it as
+a picture only, or as a chapter in a book covered in mouldy leather, with
+_f_’s for _s_’s.  In their prayers alone were Dan and Bell real
+personages; and the far-off little town was no longer a woodcut, but an
+actual place blown through by the scented airs of forest and sea.  Bell
+wrote them of rains and hails and misty weather; Grove Lane gardens
+breathed of daffodils, and the city gleamed under a constant sun.  They
+came back to the pea-green house each day from rare adventuring, looking,
+in the words of Molyneux, as if they were fresh come off the farm, and
+the best seats in half a dozen theatres were at their disposal.  “Too
+much of the playhouse altogether!” Bell wrote once, remonstrating.  “Have
+you heard that man in the City Temple yet?”
+
+In Molyneux’s own theatre there was a break in the long succession of
+melodrama and musical comedy.  He privately rejoiced that, for two ladies
+of such taste as Ailie and her niece, he could display a piece of the
+real legitimate—“King John,”—though Camberwell was not very likely to
+make a week of Shakespeare very profitable to his treasury.  Ailie and
+Bud were to go on Tuesday; and Bud sat up at night to read an acting copy
+of “King John” till every character took flesh in her imagination, and
+the little iron balcony behind the pea-green house became the
+battlemented walls of Angiers, to whose postern came trumpeters of
+France.
+
+They sat in the drawing-room, astonished at her speeches—
+
+   “You men of Angiers, open wide your gates,
+   And let young Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, in,
+   Who by the hand of France this day hath made
+   Much work for tears in many an English mother.”
+
+Or—
+
+   “I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
+   My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife;
+   Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost!”
+
+“Bravo, Bud!” would Molyneux cry, delighted.  “Why, if I was an
+actor-manager, I’d pay you any salary you had the front to name.  Ain’t
+she just great, Millicent?  I tell you, Miss Ailie, she puts the blinkers
+on Maude Adams, and sends Ellen ’way back in the standing-room only.
+Girly, all you’ve got to learn is how to move.  You mustn’t stand two
+minutes in the same place on the stage, but cross ’most every cue.”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Bud dubiously.  “Why should folk have fidgets on a
+stage?  They don’t always have them in real life.  I’d want to stand like
+a mountain—_you_ know, Auntie Ailie, the old hills at home!—and look
+so—so—so awful, the audience would shriek if I moved, the same as if I
+was going to fall on them.”
+
+“Is that how you feel?” asked Jim Molyneux, curiously surveying her.
+
+“Yes; that’s how I feel,” said Bud, “when I’ve got the zip of poetry in
+me.  I feel I’m all made up of burning words and eyes.”
+
+“Child, you are very young!” said Mrs Molyneux.
+
+“Yes,” said Bud; “I suppose that’s it.  By-and-by I’ll maybe get to be
+like other people.”
+
+Jim Molyneux struck the table with his open hand.  “By George!” he cried,
+“I wouldn’t hurry being like other people; that’s what every gol-darned
+idiot in England’s trying, and you’re right on the spot just now as you
+stand.  That’s straight talk, nothing but!  I allow I favour a bit of leg
+movement on the stage—generally it’s about the only life there is on it;
+but a woman who can play with her head don’t need to wear out much
+shoe-leather.  Girly—” he stopped a second, then burst out with the
+question: “How’d you like a little part in this ‘King John’?”
+
+A flame went over the countenance of the girl, and then she grew
+exceedingly pale.  “Oh!” she exclaimed—“Oh! Jim Molyneux, don’t be so
+cruel.”
+
+“I mean it,” he said, “and I could fix it, for they’ve got an Arthur in
+the caste who’s ill and bound to break down in a day or two if she had an
+understudy—and if I—  Think you could play a boy’s part?  There isn’t
+much to learn in Arthur, but that little speech of yours in front of
+Angiers makes me think you could make the part loom out enough to catch
+the eye of the cognoscenti.  You’d let her, wouldn’t you, Miss Ailie?
+It’d be great fun.  She’d learn the lines in an hour or two, and a couple
+of nights of looking on would put her up to all the business.  Now don’t
+kick, Miss Ailie; say, Miss Ailie, have this little treat with us!”
+
+Ailie’s heart was leaping.  Here was the crisis,—she knew it,—what was
+she to do?  She had long anticipated some such hour—had often wrestled
+with the problem whether, when it came, the world should have her Bud
+without a struggle for the claims of Bell and the simple cloistered life
+of the Scottish home.  While yet the crisis was in prospect only, she
+could come to no conclusion.  Her own wild hungers as a girl, recalled
+one night in the light of kitchen candles, had never ceased to plead for
+freedom,—for freedom and the space that herself had years ago
+surrendered: now it was the voice of the little elder sister, and the
+bell of Wanton Wully ringing at evening humble people home.
+
+“Just this once!” pleaded Mr Molyneux, understanding her scruples: Bud’s
+face mutely pleaded.
+
+Yes, “just this once!”—it was all very well, but Ailie knew the dangers
+of beginnings.  It would not even be, in this case, a beginning; the
+beginning was years ago—before the mimicry on the first New Year’s
+morning, before the night of the dozen candles, or the creation of The
+Macintosh: the child had been carried onward like a feather in a stream.
+
+“I really don’t mind much, myself,” said Ailie at last; “but I fancy her
+Aunt Bell would scarcely like it.”
+
+“Not if she knew I was going to do it,” said Lennox quickly; “but when
+the thing was over she’d be as pleased as Punch—at least, she’d laugh the
+way she did when we told her I was dressed as Grandma Buntain at the
+ball.”
+
+The sound of Will Oliver’s curfew died low in Ailie’s mind, the
+countenance of Bell grew dim: she heard, instead, the clear young voice
+of Bud among the scenery and sat with an enraptured audience.  “If you
+are all so anxious for it, then—” she said, and the deed was done!
+
+She did not rue it when the night of Bud’s performance came, and her
+niece as the hapless young Bretagne welcomed the Dauphin before the city
+gates: she gloried in the natural poignancy that marked the painful scene
+with Hubert come to torture, but she almost rued it when Molyneux, having
+escorted them in an inexplicable silence home, broke out at last in
+fervent praise of his discovery as soon as the girl had left them for her
+bed.
+
+“I’ve kept clutch of myself with considerable difficulty,” he said, “for
+I didn’t want to spoil girly’s sleep or swell her head, but I want to
+tell you, Millicent, and you, Miss Ailie, that I’VE FOUND MY STAR!  Why,
+say! she’s out of sight!  She was the only actor in all that company
+to-night who didn’t know she was in Camberwell: she was right in the
+middle of medieval France from start to finish, and when she was picked
+up dead at the end of the fourth act she was so stone-cold and stiff with
+thinking it she scared the company.  I suspect, Miss Ailie, that you’re
+going to lose that girl!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+IT was a wet night in November.  With a chuckle of horse’s hoofs on
+shining streets, Dan Dyce, with Bell and Ailie, drove from Molyneux’s
+fine new home to the temple of his former dreams—the proud Imperial.
+They sat in silence in the darkness of the cab, and in silence drifted
+into the entrance-hall of the theatre to mingle with the pompous world
+incongruously—with loud vain-glorious men, who bore to the eye of Bell
+some spirit of abandonment and mockery, with women lovely by the gift of
+God, or with dead-white faces, wax-red lips, and stealthy sidelong eyes.
+One there was who, passing before them, released a great fur cloak from
+her shoulders with a sudden movement, and, as it slowly slipped down her
+marble back, threatened an utter nakedness that made Bell gasp and clutch
+at her sister’s arm.
+
+“Look!” said Ailie eagerly—before them was a portrait of a woman in the
+dress of Desdemona.  The face had some suggestion that at times it might
+be childlike and serene, but had been caught in a moment of alarm and
+fire, and the full black eyes held in their orbs some frightful
+apprehension, the slightly parted lips expressed a soul’s mute cry.
+
+“What is it?  Who is it?” asked Bell, pausing before the picture with a
+stound of fear.
+
+“It is Bud,” said Ailie, feeling proud and sorrowful—for why she could
+not tell.  “There is the name: ‘Winifred Wallace.’”
+
+Bell wrung her hands in the shelter of her mantle and stood bewildered,
+searching for the well-known lineaments.
+
+“Let us go up,” said Dan softly, with no heed for the jostling people,
+for ever self-possessed, sorrowful to guess at his sister’s mind.
+
+“Yes, yes, let us go up out of this crowd,” said Ailie, but the little
+woman hung before the portrait fascinated.  Round her washed the waves of
+rustling garments like a surf on the shore at home; scents wafted;
+English voices, almost foreign in their accent, fell upon her ear all
+unnoticed since she faced the sudden revelation of what her brother’s
+child, her darling, had become.  Seekers of pleasure, killers of
+wholesome cares, froth of the idle world eddied around her chattering,
+laughing, glancing curious or contemptuous at her grey sweet face, her
+homely form, her simple Sabbath garments: all her heart cried out in
+supplication for the child that had too soon become a woman and wandered
+from the sanctuary of home.
+
+“We are blocking the way here, Bell.  Let us go up,” again said Ailie,
+gently taking her arm.
+
+“Yes,” said her brother.  “It’s not a time for contemplation of the
+tombs—it’s not the kirkyard, Bell.  You see there are many that are
+anxious to get in.”
+
+“Oh, Lennox, Lennox!” she exclaimed, indifferent to the strangers round
+about her, “my brother’s child!  I wish—oh, I wish ye were at home!  God
+grant ye grace and wisdom: ‘Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and
+thy foot shall not stumble.  When thou liest down, thou shalt not be
+afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.’”
+
+They went up to the box that Molyneux had kept for them, to find his wife
+there nursing an enormous bouquet of flowers, all white as the driven
+snow.  “A gorgeous house!” she told them.  “Everybody that’s anybody, and
+in the front push.  Half a hundred critics, two real Count Vons, a lot of
+benzine brougham people who never miss a first night—there are their
+wives, poor dears! shining same as they were Tiffany’s windows.  My!
+ain’t our Bud going to have a happy night!”
+
+They sat and looked for a while in silence at the scene before them, so
+pleasing to the mind that sought, in crowds, in light and warmth and
+gaiety, its happiest associations; so wanting in the great eternal calm
+and harmony that are out of doors in country places.  Serpent eyes in
+facets of gems on women’s bosoms; heads made monstrous yet someway
+beautiful and tempting by the barber’s art; shoulders bare and bleached,
+devoid of lustre; others blushing as if Eve’s sudden apprehension had
+survived the generations.  Sleek shaven faces, linen breastplates,
+opera-glasses, flowers, fans, a murmur of voices, and the flame over all
+of the enormous electrolier.
+
+It was the first time Bell had seen a theatre.  Her first thought was one
+of blame and pity.  “‘He looked on the city and wept’!” said she.  “Oh,
+Ailie, that it were over and we were home!”
+
+“All to see Miss Winifred Wallace!” said Mrs Molyneux.  “Think of that,
+Miss Dyce,—your darling niece, and she’ll be so proud and happy!”
+
+Bell sighed.  “At least she had got her own way, and I am a foolish old
+country-woman who had different plans.”
+
+Dan said nothing.  Ailie waited too, silent, in a feverish expectation;
+and from the fiddles rose a sudden melody.  It seemed the only wise and
+sober thing in all that humming hive of gaudy insects passing, passing,
+passing.  It gave a voice to human longings for a nobler, better world;
+and in it, too, were memory and tears.  To the people in the box it
+seemed to tell Bud’s story—opening in calm sweet passages, closing in the
+roll of trumpet and the throb of drum.  And then the lights went down,
+and the curtain rose upon the street in Venice.
+
+The early scenes were dumb and vacant, wanting Bud’s presence: there was
+no play for them till she came slowly into the council chamber where sat
+the senators, timidity and courage struggling in her port and visage.
+
+“No, no; it is not Bud,” Bell whispered.  “It is not our lassie, this one
+is too tall and—and too deliberate.  I fear she has not dared it at the
+last, or that she has been found unsuitable.”
+
+Ailie leaned forward, quivering, feeding her eyes.  “It’s no one else,”
+said she.  “Dear Bud, _our_ Bud!  Those two years’ training may have made
+her someways different, but she has not changed her smile.  Oh! I am so
+proud, and sure of her!  Hus-s-sh!”
+
+   “I do perceive here a divided duty:
+   To you I am bound for life and education;
+   My life and education both do learn me
+   How to respect you; you are the lord of duty:
+   I am hitherto your daughter: but here’s my husband.”
+
+Desdemona’s first speech broke the stillness that had fallen on the
+house: her face was pale, they saw the rapid heaving of her bosom, they
+heard a moment’s tremor in her voice matured and wonderful, sweet as a
+silver bell.  To the box where she knew her friends were sitting she let
+her eyes for a second wander as she spoke the opening lines that had so
+much of double meaning—not Desdemona, but the loving and wilful child
+asking forgiveness, yet tenacious of her purpose.
+
+To Ailie came relief and happiness and pride: Dan held a watching brief
+for his elder sister’s prejudices and his own philosophy.  Bell sat in
+tears which Shakespeare did not influence.  When next she saw the stage
+with unblurred eyes Desdemona was leaving with the Moor.
+
+“My dears,” said Mrs Molyneux, “as Desdemona she’s the Only One! and Jim
+was right.  It’s worth a thousand times more trouble than he took with
+her.  He said all along she’d dazzle them, and I guess her fortune’s
+made, and it’s going to be the making of this house too.  I feel so proud
+and happy I’d kiss you right here, Mr Dyce, if it wouldn’t mess up my
+bouquet.”
+
+“A black man!” said Bell regretfully.  “I know it is only paint, of
+course, but—but I never met him; I do not even know his name.”
+
+It seemed as if the play had nothing in it but the words and acts of
+Desdemona.  At each appearance she became more confident, charged the
+part with deeper feeling, found new meaning in the time-worn words.  Even
+Bell began to lose her private judgment, forget that it was nothing but a
+sinful play, and feel some pity for Othello; but, as the knavish coils
+closed round her Desdemona, the strain became unbearable.
+
+“Oh! I cannot stand it any longer,” she exclaimed, when the voice of
+Lennox quavered in the song before her last good-night, and saying so,
+pushed back her seat into the shadows of the box, covering her ears with
+her fingers.  She saw no more; she heard no more till the audience rose
+to its feet with thunders of applause that swelled and sunk and swelled
+again as if it would never end.  Then she dared to look, and saw a
+trembling Desdemona all alone before a curtain bowing.
+
+“What is the matter?  What is the matter?  Why are they crying that way
+on her?” she asked, dumbfounded.
+
+“Why, don’t you see they’re mad!” said Mrs Molyneux.
+
+“Oh, dear! and I thought she was doing splendidly.”
+
+“Glad mad, I mean.  She has carried them off their feet, and I’ll bet Jim
+Molyneux is standing on his hands behind that drop and waving his legs in
+the air.  Guess I needn’t waste this bouquet on a girl who looks like the
+morning hour in Covent Garden.”
+
+Molyneux burst into the box in a gust of wild excitement.  “Come round,
+come round at once—she wants to see you,” he exclaimed, and led them
+deviously behind the scenes to her dressing-room.
+
+She stood at the door, softly crying; she looked at them—the grave old
+uncle; Ailie who could understand, the little Auntie Bell,—it was into
+the arms of Bell she threw herself!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+“THE talk of the whole of London!  The beauteous Lady Anne herself’s not
+in it with her!” said Will Oliver, scratching behind his ears.  “Man, is
+it no’ just desperate?  But I’ll warrant ye there’s money in it, for it’s
+yonder folk are willing to pay well for their diversion.”
+
+“Are you sure,” said P. & A., “it’s not another woman altogether?  It
+gives the name of Wallace in the paper.”
+
+The bellman, sitting on a soap-box, slapped his thigh and said, “I’m
+telling ye; I had it long ago from Kate MacNeill that her name on the
+stage was going to be Wallace—Winifred Wallace, and there it is in print.
+Tra—tragedienny, tragediennys are the head ones in the trade: I’ve seen
+them in the shows—tr-r-r-emendous women!”
+
+The Provost, who had just stepped into P. & A.’s for his Sunday sweeties,
+smiled tolerantly and passed his taddy-box.  “Bud Dyce,” said he, “is
+never likely to be round this way in a caravan to do the deid-drap three
+times every night for front-seats sixpence.  I doubt we have seen the
+last of her, unless we have the money and the clothes for London
+theatres.”
+
+“It’s really her, then?” said the grocer.
+
+“You can take Wull’s word for that,” said the Provost, “and I have just
+been talking to her uncle.  Her history’s in the morning paper, and I’m
+the civic head of a town renowned for genius.”
+
+Wanton Wully went out to drift along the street in the light of the
+bright shop-windows before which bairns played “chaps me,” making choice
+of treasures for their gaudiness alone, like most of us, who should know
+better.  He met George Jordon.  “Geordie,” said he, “you’ll have heard
+the latest?  You should be in London: yon’s the place for oddity,” and
+George, with misty comprehension, turned about for the road to London
+town.  Out of the inn came Colin Cleland, hurried, in his hand the
+business-looking packet of tattered documents that were always his excuse
+for being there.
+
+“Winifred Wallace—Great Tragedienny!  It’s a droll thing life, according
+to the way you look at it.  Stirring times in London, Mr Cleland!
+Changed her name to Wallace, having come of decent worthy people.  We
+know, but we’ll not let on.”
+
+“Not a word!” said Colin Cleland comically.  “Perhaps she may get better
+and the thing blow by.  Are you under the impression that celebrity’s a
+thing to be ashamed of?  I tell you she’s a credit to us all.”
+
+“Lord bless me! do you say so?” asked Wull Oliver.  “If I was a
+tragedienny I would be ashamed to show my face in the place again.  We
+all expected something better from the wee one—she was such a caution!
+It was myself, as you might say, invented her: I gave her a start at
+devilment by letting her ring the New Year bell.  After that she always
+called me Mr Wanton, and kindly inquired at me about my legs.  She was
+always quite the leddy.”
+
+Miss Minto’s shop was busy: a boy was in with a very red face demanding
+the remnants that by rights should have gone home with his mother’s
+jacket, and the Misses Duff were buying chiffon.
+
+“This is startling news about young Lennox Dyce,” remarked Miss Minto.
+“It’s caused what you might call a stir.  There’s not a weekly paper to
+be had for love or money.”
+
+“She was always most peculiar,” said Miss Jean.
+
+“Bizarre,” cooed Miss Amelia,—it was her latest adjective.
+
+“I was sure there was something special about in her since the very first
+day I saw her,” said the mantua-maker.  “Yon eye, Miss Duff!  And what a
+sweet and confident expression!  I am so glad she has pleased them up in
+London; you never can depend on them.  I am thinking of a novel blouse to
+mark in what I think will be a pleasing way the great occasion—the
+Winifred Wallace Waist I’m calling it: you remember the clever Mr
+Molyneux?”
+
+“I doubt we never understood her,” said Miss Jean.  “But we make a
+feature now of elocution,”
+
+“Not that we wish to turn out great tragediennes,” said Miss Amelia.
+“There’s happiness in humbler vocations.”
+
+“I daresay there is,” confessed Miss Minto.  “I never thought of the
+stage myself; my gift was always dressmaking, and you wouldn’t believe
+the satisfaction that’s in seeing a dress of mine on a woman who can do
+it justice.  We have all our own bit art, and that’s a wonderful
+consolation.  But I’m very glad at that girl’s progress, for the sake of
+Mr Dyce—and, of course, his sisters.  Miss Ailie is transported, in the
+seventh heaven, and even her sister seems quite pleased.  ‘You’ll have a
+high head to-day,’ I said to her when she was passing from the coach this
+afternoon.”
+
+“And what did she say to that?” inquired Miss Jean, with curiosity.
+
+“You know Miss Dyce!  She gave a smile and said, ‘But a humble heart—it’s
+the Dyces’ motto.’”
+
+The doctor put his paper down, having read the great news over several
+times with a singular satisfaction that surprised his sisters, who were
+beat to see much glory in a state of life that meant your name on every
+wall and the picture of your drawing-room every other week in ‘Homely
+Notes.’  Drawing on his boots, he took a turn the length of the lawyer’s
+house.
+
+“Faith!  London has the luck of it,” he said on entering.  “I wish I was
+there myself to see this wonderful Desdemona.  I hope you liked your
+jaunt, Miss Bell?”
+
+“It wasn’t bad,” said Bell, putting out the cards.  “But, mercy on me!
+what a silly way they have of baking bread in England—all crust outside,
+though I grant it’s sweet enough when you break into it.”
+
+“H’m!” said Dr Brash, “I’ve seen Scotch folk a bit like that.  She has
+rung the bell, I see; her name is made.”
+
+“It is, they tell me,” answered Bell, “but I hope it will never change
+her nature.”
+
+“She had aye a genius,” said Mr Dyce, cutting the pack for partners.
+
+“She had something better,” said Miss Ailie, “she had love;” and on the
+town broke forth the evening bell.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
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