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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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAFT DAYS***
+
+
+credit
+
+
+
+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
+_repertoire_ 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."
+
+
+
+
+
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