Shewas 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 roofthat 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 ithasstopped. 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 manin 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 startwith, 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 itsrépertoirewas 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 thestreet 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.
“Iheardall 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 gettingthat 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 makesup 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 wasSamson’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 fromColonsay,” said the maid regretfully. “I should have kept my mouth shut about your father. Taketwobiscuits, 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 himHe’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 usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints 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 andwicked 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 highOn a stern and rock-bound coast—’
but I forget the rest, ’cept that
‘—they come to wither thereAway 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.
IfMolyneux, 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, sothat 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. Mylassie, 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 cannot,” 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; thetheft 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 whatshe 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. “Andthe 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 sweetThan that of painted pomp? Are not these woodsMore 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 fingerand 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’—notnearlyso 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.
Daniel Dycehad 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 sofast,” 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 welloff 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 scurrydown 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 itperfectlyexquisite!” 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”