Bellliked the creature, as I say; not a little because she saw in him whence came some part of Bud’s jocosity, and most of the daft-like language (though kind of clever too, she must allow) in which it was expressed. It was a different kind of jocosity from Dan’s, whose fun, she used to say, partook of the nature of rowan jelly, being tart and sweet in such a cunning combination that it tickled every palate and held some natural virtue of the mountain tree. The fun of Molyneux had another flavour—it put her in mind of allspice, being foreign, having heat as well as savour. But in each of these droll men was the main thing, as she would aye consider it—no distrust of the Creator’s judgment, good intentions and ability, and a readiness to be laughed at as well as find laughter’s cause in others. She liked the man, but still-and-on was almost glad when the telegram came from Edinburgh and he went back to join his company. It was not any lack of hospitality made her feel relief, but the thought that now Bud’s going was determined on, there was so much to do in a house where men would only be a bother.
Mr Molyneux found himself so much at home among them, he was loth to go, expressing his contempt for a mode of transit to the railway that took two hours to nineteen miles; but Bell, defensive even of her country’s coaches, told him he was haivering,—that any greater speed than that was simply tempting Providence. He praised the Lord there was noProvidence to be tempted inside Sandy Hook, and that he knew Beef Kings who hurled themselves across the landscape at the rate of a mile a minute. The fact inspired no admiration in Miss Bell: she wondered at the misguided wretches scudding like that regardless of their lives, and them with so much money.
Before he left he called at the Pigeons’ Seminary to say good-bye to the little teachers, and sipped tea,—a British institution which he told them was as deleterious as the High Ball of his native land. High Ball—what was a High Ball? asked Miss Amelia, scenting a nice new phrase; but he could only vaguely indicate that it was something made of rye and soda. Then she understood—it was a teetotal drink men took in clubs, a kind of barley-water. The tea gratified him less than the confidence of the twins, who told him they had taken what he said about the—about the shameful article so much to heart, that they had given it for a razor-strop to one George Jordon.
“Bully for you!” cried Mr Molyneux delighted. “But I’d have liked that tawse some, myself, for my wife’s mighty keen on curios. She’s got a sitting-room full of Navaho things: scalpin’-knives, tomahawks, and other brutal bric-a-brac, and an early British strap would tickle her to death.”
Well, he was gone: the coachman’s horn had scarcely ceased to echo beyond the arches, when Miss Bell had thrown herself into the task of preparing for Bud’s change in life.
What school was she to go to in Edinburgh?—Ailie knew: there was none better than the one she had gone to herself.
When did it open?—Ailie knew: in a fortnight.
What, exactly, would she need?—Ailie knew that too: she had in the escritoire a list of things made up already.
“It seems to me,” said Miss Bell suspiciously, “you’re desperately well informed on all that appertains to this sudden necessity. How long has it been in your mind?”
“For a twelvemonth at least,” answered Ailie boldly. “How long has it been in your own?”
“H’m!” said Bell. “About as long, but I refused to harbour it; and—and now that the thing’s decided on, Ailie Dyce, I hope you’re not going to stand there arguing away about it all day long, when there’s so much to do.”
Surely there was never another house so throng, so bustling, so feverish in anxiety, as this one was for the next fortnight. The upper and the lower Dyce Academy took holiday; Kate’s education stopped with a sudden gasp at a dreadful hill called Popocatepetl, and she said she did not care a button, since Captain Maclean (no longer Charles to any one except himself and Bud in the more confidential moments) said the main things needed in a sailor’s wife were health, hope, and temper and a few good-laying hens. Miss Minto was engaged upon Bud’s grandest garments, running out and in next door herself with inch-tapes over her shoulders and a mouthful of pins, and banging up against the lawyer in his lobby to her great distress of mind. And Bell had in the seamstress, ’Lizbeth Ann, to help her and Ailie with the rest. Mercator sulked neglected on the wall of Mr Dyce’s study, which was strewn with basting-threads and snippets of selvedge and lining till it looked like a tailor’s shop, and Bud and Footles played on the floor of it with that content which neither youth nor dogs can find in chambers trim and orderly. Even Kate was called in to help these hurried operations—they termed it the making of Bud’s trousseau. In the garden birds were calling, calling; far sweeter in the women’s ears were the snip-snip of scissors and the whir of the sewing-machine; needle arms went back and forth like fiddle-bows in an orchestra, and from webs of cloth and linen came forth garments whose variety intoxicated her who was to wear them. I’m thinking Daniel Dyce lived simply then, with rather makeshift dinners, but I’m certain, knowing him well, he did not care, since his share in the greatadventure was to correspond with Edinburgh, and pave the way there for the young adventurer’s invasion.
He would keek in at the door on them as he passed to his office, and Ailie would cry, “Avaunt, man! here woman reigns.”
“It’s a pleasant change,” he would say. “I would sooner have them rain than storm.”
“You’re as bad as Geordie Jordon,” said Miss Bell, biting thread with that zest which always makes me think her sex at some time must have lived on cotton,—“you’re as bad as Geordie Jordon, you cannot see a keyhole but your eye begins to water.”
If it had indeed been Bud’s trousseau, the town folk could not have displayed more interest. Ladies came each day to see how things progressed, and recommend a heavier lining or another row of the insertion. Even Lady Anne came one afternoon to see the trousseau, being interested, as she slyly said, in such things for private reasons of her own, and dubious about the rival claims of ivory or pure white. So she said; but she came, no doubt, to assure Miss Lennox that her captain was a great success.
“I knew he’d be!” said Bud complacently. “That man’s so beautiful and good, he’s fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“So are you—you rogue!” said Lady Anne, gathering her in her arms, without a bit of awkwardness, to the great astonishment of ’Lizbeth Ann, who thought that titled folk were not a bit like that—perhaps had not the proper sort of arms for it. Yes, “So are you—you rogue!” said Lady Anne.
“No, I’m not,” said the child. “Leastways only sometimes. Most the time I’m a born limb, but then again I’m nearly always trying to be better, and that’s what counts, I guess.”
“And you’re going away to leave us,” said Lady Anne, whereon a strange thing happened, for the joyous child, who was to get her heart’s desire and such lovely garments, burst into tears, and ran fromthe room to hide herself upstairs in the attic bower, whose windows looked to a highway that seemed hateful through her tears. Her ladyship went off distressed, but Bell, as one rejoicing, said, “I always told you, Ailie—William’s heart!”
But Bud’s tears were transient: she was soon back among the snippets where Ailie briskly plied the sewing-machine, and sang the kind of cheerful songs that alone will go to the time of pedalling, and so give proof that the age of mechanism is the merry age, if we have the happy ear for music. And Bud, though she tired so soon of hems, could help another way that busy convocation, for she could sit tucked up in Uncle Dan’s snoozing chair and read ‘Pickwick’ to the women till the maid of Colonsay was in the mood to take the Bardell body by the hair of the head and shake her for her brazenness to the poor wee man. Or the child would dance as taught by the lady of the Vaudeville, or start at Ailie’s bidding (Bell a little dubious) to declaim a bit of “Hamlet” or “Macbeth,” till ’Lizbeth Ann saw ghosts and let her nerves get the better of her, and there was nothing for it but a cheery cup of tea all round. Indeed, I must confess, a somewhat common company! I could almost wish for the sake of my story they were more genteel, and dined at half-past seven, and talked in low hushed tones of Bach and Botticelli.
But, oh! they were happy days—at least, so far as all outward symptoms went: it might indeed have been a real trousseau, and not the garments for the wedding of a maiden and the world. How often in the later years did Winifred Wallace, reading to me her own applause in newspapers, stop to sigh and tell me how she once was really happy—happy to the inward core, feeling the dumb applause of four women in a country chamber, when the world was all before her, and her heart was young.
Workingthus, furiously, at the task of love, which, in all it does for the youth it cherishes, must ever be digging a grave for its own delight, Bell could forget, for periods, that the days of Bud’s presence in their midst were numbered. Had she stopped her needle and shears a moment, and let her mind contemplate all the emptiness of a fortnight hence and the months and years thereafter, she would have broken down. Ailie, knowing it, watched her anxiously, and kept the sewing briskly going as if they wrought for a living in a factory, frightened to think of her sister’s desperate state when that last button, that the Armies talk about, was in its place.
But the days sped: one afternoon there was a final sweeping up of the scraps in the temporary workroom, Bell searched her mind in vain to think of anything further wanted, and, though there were still two weeks to go, became appalled to find that the only thing of any moment to be done ’twixt now and Friday fortnight was to say Good-bye!
No, stay! There was another thing to bring a little respite—the girl’s initials must be sewn upon her clothing. A trivial thing to mention, you may think, but the very thought of it gave pleasure to the sisters, till Bud herself, sent to Miss Minto’s for a sample of the woven letters, came back with only one—it was a W.
“Has the stupid body not got L’s and D’s?” asked Bell. “There’s no use here for W.” And Bud showed a countenance startled and ashamed.
“Oh, Auntie!” she cried, “I asked for W’s. I quite forgot my name was Lennox Dyce, for in all I’m thinking of about the school and Edinburgh, I am Winifred Wallace.”
It was all that was needed to bring about her aunt’s prostration! “I’m far from well,” said she, and took to her bed, her first confession of weakness in all the years that Dan or Ailie could remember. What ailed her she could not tell, and they sent, without acquainting her, for Dr Brash. Hearing he was coming, she protested that she could not see the man—that she was far too ill to be troubled by any doctor; but Dr Brash was not so easily to be denied.
“H’m!” said he, examining her. “Your system’s badly down.”
“I never knew I had one,” said the lady, smiling wanly, with a touch of Dan’s rowan-jelly humour. “Women had no system in my young days to go up or down: if they had, they were ashamed to mention it. Nowadays, it seems as fashionable as what Kate, since she got her education, calls the boil.”
“You have been worrying,” he went on,—“a thing that’s dreadfully injudicious. H’m! worse than drink,Isay. Worry’s the death of half my patients; they never give my pills a chance,” and there was a twinkle in his eyes which most of Dr Brash’s patients thought was far more efficacious than his pills.
“What would I worry for?” said Miss Bell. “I’m sure I have every blessing; goodness and mercy all my life.”
“Just so! just so!” said Dr Brash. “Goodness and—and, h’m—mercy sometimes take the form of a warning that it’s time we kept to bed for a week, and that’s what I recommend you.”
“Mercy on me! Am I so far through as that?” she said, alarmed. “It’s something serious,—I know by the cheerful face that you put on you. Little did I think that I would drop off so soon. And just at the very time when there’s so much to do!”
“Pooh!” said Dr Brash. “When you drop off,Miss Dyce, there’ll be an awful dunt, I’m telling you! God bless my soul, what do you think a doctor’s for but putting folk on their pins again! A week in bed—and—h’m!—a bottle. Everything’s in the bottle, mind you!”
“And there’s the hands of the Almighty too,” said Bell, who constantly deplored the doctor was so poor a Kirk attender, and not a bit in that respect like the noble doctors in her sister’s latest Scottish novels.
Dr Brash went out of the room, to find the rest of the household sorely put about in the parlour, Lennox an object of woe, and praying hard to herself with as much as she could remember of her Uncle Dan’s successful supplication for herself when she had the pneumonia. To see the cheerfulness of his countenance when he came in was like the sun-burst on a leaden sea. “Miss Bell’s as sound as her namesake,” he assured them. “There’s been something on her mind”—with a flash of the eye, at once arrested, towards Lennox,—“and she has worked herself into a state of nervous collapse. I’ve given her the best of tonics for her kind,—the dread of a week in bed,—and I’ll wager she’ll be up by Saturday. The main thing is to keep her cheerful, and I don’t think that should be very difficult.”
Bud there and then made up her mind that her own true love was Dr Brash, in spite of his nervous sisters and his funny waistcoats. Ailie said if cheerfulness would do the thing she was ready for laughing-gas, and the lawyer vowed he would rake the town for the very latest chronicles of its never-ending fun.
But Bud was long before him on her mission of cheerfulness to the bedroom of Auntie Bell. Did you ever see a douce Scotch lass who never in her life had harboured the idea that her native hamlet was other than the finest dwelling-place in all the world, and would be happy never to put a foot outside it?—that was to be therôleto-day. A sober little lass, sitting in a wicker-chair whose faintest creak appeared to puther in an agony—sitting incredibly long and still, and speaking Scotch when spoken to, in the most careful undertone, with a particular kind of smile that was her idea of judicious cheerfulness for a sick-room.
“Bairn!” cried her aunt at last, “if you sit much longer like that you’ll drive me crazy. What in the world’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, dear Auntie Bell,” said Bud, astonished.
“You needn’t tell me! What was the Doctor saying?”
“He said you were to be kept cheerful,” said Bud, “and I’m doing the best I can—”
“Bless me, lass! do you think it’s cheery to be sitting there with a face like a Geneva watch? I would sooner see you romping.”
But no, Bud could not romp that day, and when her Uncle Dan came up he found her reading aloud from Bell’s favourite Gospel according to John—her auntie’s way of securing the cheerfulness required. He looked at the pair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent, and all the joviality with which he had come carefully charged gave place for a little to a graver sentiment. So had Ailie sat, a child, beside her mother on her death-bed, and, reading John one day, found open some new vista in her mind that made her there and then renounce her dearest visions, and thirl herself for ever to the home and him and Bell.
“Well, Dan,” said his sister, when the child was gone, “what have you brought me? Is it the usual pound of grapes?”—for she was of the kind whose most pious exercises never quench their sense of fun, and a gift of grapes in our place is a doleful hint to folks bedridden: I think they sometimes might as well bring in the stretching-board.
“A song-book would suit you better,” said the lawyer. “What do you think’s the matter with you? Worrying about that wean! Is this your Christian resignation?”
“I amnotworrying, Dan,” she protested. “Atleast, not very much, and I never was the one to make much noise about my Christianity.”
“You need to be pretty noisy with it nowadays to make folk believe you mean it.”
“What did Dr Brash say down the stair?” she asked. “Does he—does he think I’m going to die?”
“Lord bless me!” cried her brother, “this is not the way that women die. I never heard of you having a broken heart. You’re missing all the usual preliminaries, and you haven’t even practised being ill. No, no, Bell; it’ll be many a day, I hope, before you’re pushing up the daisies, as that vagabond Wanton Wully puts it.”
Bell sighed. “You’re very joco’,” said she; “you’re aye cheery, whatever happens.”
“So long as it doesn’t happen to myself—that’s philosophy; at least it’s Captain Consequence’s. And if I’m cheery to-day it’s by the Doctor’s orders. He says you’re to be kept from fretting, even if we have to hire the band.”
“Then I doubt I’m far far through!” said Bell; “I’m booked for a better land,”—and at that the lawyer gave a chirruping little laugh, and said, “Are you sure it’s not for Brisbane?”
“What do you mean?” she asked him, marvellously interested for one who talked of dying.
“It’s a new one,” he exclaimed. “I had it to-day from her ladyship’s Captain. He was once on a ship that sailed to Australia, and half-way out a passenger took very ill. ‘That one’s booked for heaven, anyway,’ Maclean said to the purser. ‘No,’ said the purser, who was busy, ‘he’s booked for Brisbane.’ ‘Then he would be a D. sight better in heaven,’ said Maclean; ‘I have been twice in Brisbane, and I know.’”
Bell did her best to restrain a smile, but couldn’t. “Oh, Dan!” said she, “you’re an awful man! You think there’s nothing in this world to daunten anybody.”
“Not if they happen to be Dyces,” said he. “A high heart and a humble head—you rememberfather’s motto? And here you’re dauntened because the young one’s going only one or two hundred miles away for her own advantage.”
“I’m not a bit dauntened,” said Miss Bell with spirit. “It’s not myself I’m thinking of at all—it’s her, poor thing! among strangers night and day; damp sheets, maybe, and not a wise-like thing to eat. You would never forgive yourself if she fell into a decline.”
“Ailie throve pretty well on their dieting,” he pointed out; “and if she’s going to fall into a decline, she’s pretty long of starting.”
“But you mind they gave her sago pudding,” said Miss Bell; “and if there’s one thing Lennox cannot eat, it’s sago pudding. She says it is so slippy, every spoonful disappears so sudden it gives her an awful start. She says she might as well sup puddocks.”
Dan smiled at the picture and forced himself to silent patience.
“And they’ll maybe let her sit up to all hours,” Bell proceeded. “You know the way she fastens on a book at bed-time!”
“Well, well!” said he emphatically. “If you’re sure that things are to be so bad as that, we’ll not let her go at all,” and he slyly scanned her countenance to see, as he expected, that she was indignant at the very thought of backing out now that they had gone so far.
“You needn’t start to talk nonsense,” said she; “of course she’s going. But oh, Dan! it’s not the sheets, nor food, nor anything like that, that troubles me; it’s the knowledge that she’ll never be the same wee lass again.”
“Tuts!” said Daniel Dyce, and cleaned some moisture from his spectacles; “you’re putting all the cheerful things I was going to say to you out of my head. I’m off to business; is there anything I can do for you? No. Then, remember, you’re not to stir this week outside the blankets; these are the orders of Dr Brash. I have no doubt Ailie will dovery well at the house-keeping,” and he left her with a gleam of mischief in his eye.
The window of the bedroom was a little open; on one of the trees a blackbird sang, and there came in the scent of apple-ringie and a tempting splendour of sun. For twenty minutes the ailing lady tried to content herself with the thought of a household managed by Alison Dyce, and then arose to see if Wully Oliver was not idling in the garden. She saw him sitting on his barrow-trams, while Ailie walked among the dahlias, and chucked her favourites of them under their chins.
“William Oliver!” cried Miss Bell indignantly, having thrown a Shetland shawl about her; “is that all the work you can do in a day?”
He looked up at the window and slowly put his pipe in his pocket.
“Well, m’em,” said he, “I daresay I could do more, but I never was much of a hand for showing off.”
WhenMiss Bell rose, as she did in a day or two, bantered into a speedy convalescence by Ailie and Dan, it was to mark Bud’s future holidays on the calendar, and count the months in such a cunning way that she cheated the year of a whole one, by arguing to herself that the child would be gone a fortnight before they really missed her, and as good as home again whenever she started packing to return. And Edinburgh, when one was reasonable and came to think of it, was not so very awful: the Miss Birds were there, in the next street to the school where Bud was bound for, so if anything should happen,—a fire, for instance—fires were desperately common just now in the newspapers, and ordinary commonsense suggested a whole clothes-rope for the tying up of the young adventurer’s boxes; or if Bud should happen to be really hungry between her usual meals—a common thing with growing bairns,—the Birds were the very ones to make her welcome. It was many a year since Bell had been in Edinburgh,—she had not been there since mother died,—she was determined that, if she had the money and was spared till Martinmas, she should make a jaunt of it and see the shops: it was very doubtful if Miss Minto wasn’t often lamentably out of date with many of her fashions.
“Oh, you vain woman!” cried Ailie to her; “will nothing but the very latest satisfy you?”
Bud was to be sure and write once every week, on any day but Saturday, for if her letters came onSunday they would be tempted to call at the post-office for them, like Captain Consequence, instead of waiting till the Monday morning. And if she had a cold or any threatening of quinsy, she was to fly for her very life to the hoarhound mixture, put a stocking round her neck, and go to bed. Above all, was she to mind and take her porridge every morning, and to say her prayers.
“I’ll take porridge to beat the band,” Bud promised, “even—even if I have to shut my eyes all through.”
“In a cautious moderation,” recommended Uncle Dan. “I think myself oatmeal is far too rich a diet for the blood. I have it from Captain Consequence that there’s nothing for breakfast like curried kidney and a chop to follow. But I hope you’ll understand that, apart from the carnal appetites, the main thing is to scoop in all the prizes. I’ll be dreadfully disappointed if you come back disgraced, with anything less of them than the full of a cart. That, I believe, is the only proof of a liberal Scottish education. In Ailie’s story-books it’s all the good, industrious, and deserving pupils who get everything. Of course, if you take all the prizes somebody’s sure to want,—but, tuts! I would never let that consideration vex me—it’s their own look-out. If you don’t take prizes, either in the school or in the open competition of the world, how are folk to know they should respect you?”
“You must have been a wonderfully successful student in your day,” said Ailie mischievously. “Where are all your medals?”
Dan laughed. “It’s ill to say,” said he, “for the clever lads who won them when I wasn’t looking have been so modest ever since that they’ve clean dropped out of sight. I never won anything myself in all my life that called for competition—except the bottom of the class! When it came to competitions, and I could see the other fellows’ faces, I was always far too tired or well disposed to them to give them a disappointment which they seemingly couldn’t stand so well as myself. But then I’m not like Bud here.I hadn’t a shrewd old uncle egging me on. So you must be keen on the prizes, Bud. Of course there’s wisdom too, but that comes later,—there’s no hurry for it. Prizes, prizes—remember the prizes: the more you win, the more, I suppose, I’ll admire you.”
“And if I don’t win any, Uncle Dan?” said Bud slyly, knowing very well the nature of his fun.
“Then, I suppose, I’ll have to praise the Lord if you keep your health, and just continue loving you,” said the lawyer. “I admit that if you’re anyway addicted to the prizes, you’ll be the first of your name that was so. In that same school in Edinburgh your Auntie Ailie’s quarterly reports had always ‘Conduct—Good,’ and ‘Mathematics—Fairly moderate.’ We half expected she was coming back an awful dilly; but if she did, she made a secret of it. I forgave her the ‘Fairly moderate’ myself, seeing she had learned one thing—how to sing. I hope you’ll learn to sing, Bud, in French, or German, or Italian—anything but Scotch. Our old Scotch songs, I’m told, are not what’s called artistic.”
“The sweetest in the world!” cried Auntie Bell. “I wonder to hear you haivering.”
“I’m afraid you’re not a judge of music,” said the brother. “Scotch songs are very common—everybody knows them. There’s no art in them, there’s only heart—a trifling kind of quality. If you happen to hear me singing ‘Annie Laurie’ or ‘Afton Water’ after you come home, Bud, be sure and check me. I want to be no discredit to you.”
“No, I shan’t, Uncle Dan,” said the child. “I’ll sing ‘Mary Morison,’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss,’ and ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ at you till you’re fairly squealing with delight. I know. Allow me! why, you’re only haivering.”
“Have mercy on the child, Dan,” said his sister. “Never you mind him, Bud; he’s only making fun of you.”
“I know,” said Bud; “but I’m not kicking.”
Kate—ah! poor Kate—how sorry I should be forher, deserted by her friend and tutor, if she had not her own consoling Captain. Kate would be weeping silently every time the pipe was on in the scullery, and she thought how lonely her kitchen was to be when the child was gone. And she had plans to make that painful exile less heartrending: she was going to write to her sister out in Colonsay and tell her to be sure and send fresh country eggs at intervals of every now and then, or maybe oftener in the winter-time, to Lennox; for the genuine country egg was a thing it was hopeless to expect in Edinburgh, where there wasn’t such a thing as sand, or grass, or heather—only causeway stones. She could assure Lennox that, as for marriage, there was not the slightest risk for years and years, since there wasn’t a house in the town to let that would be big enough (and still not dear) to suit a Captain. He was quite content to be a plain intended, and hold on. And as for writing, she would take her pen in hand quite often and send the latest news to Lennox, who must please excuse haste, and these d-d-desperate pens, and having the post to catch—not that she would dream of catching the poor, wee, shauchly creature: it was just a way of speaking. Would Lennox not be dreadful home-sick, missing all the cheery things, and smothered up in books in yon place—Edinburgh?
“I expect I’ll be dre’ffle home-sick,” admitted Bud.
“I’m sure you will, my lassie,” said the maid. “I was so home-sick myself when I came here at first that my feet got almost splay with wanting to turn back to Colonsay. But if I’m not so terribly good-looking, I’m awful brave, and soon got over it. When you are home-sick go down to the quay and look at the steamboats, or take a turn at our old friend Mr Puckwuck.”
Four days—three days—two days—one day—to-morrow; that last day went so fast, it looked as if Wanton Wully had lost the place again and rang the evening bell some hours before it was due. Bud could only sit by, helpless, and marvel at theingenuity that could be shown in packing what looked enough to stock Miss Minto’s shop into a couple of boxes. She aged a twelvemonth between the hand-glass at the bottom and the bath-sheet on the top.
“And in this corner,” said Miss Bell, on her knees, “you’ll find your Bible, the hoarhound mixture, and five-and-twenty threepenny-bits for the plate on Sundays. Some of them sixpences.”
“Irish ones, apparently,” said Uncle Dan.
“Some of them sixpences, for the Foreign Mission days, and one shilling for the day of the Highlands and Islands.”
“You’re well provided for the kirk at any rate,” said Uncle Dan. “I’ll have to put a little money for this wicked world in the other corner,” and he did.
When the coach next day set out—No, no, I cannot tell you all, for I hate to think of tears, and would hurry over partings. It went in tearful weather, rain drizzling on Bud and Auntie Ailie, who accompanied her. They looked back on the hill-top, and saw the grey slates glint under a grey sky, and following them on the miry road, poor Footles, faithful heart, who did not understand. He paddled through the mud till a blast from the bugle startled him, and he seemed to realise that this was some painful new experience. And then he stood in the track of the disappearing wheels, and lifted up his voice in lamentation.
The night came on, resuming her ancient empire—for she alone, and not the day, did first possess and finally shall possess unquestioned this space dusty with transient stars, and the light is Lord of another universe where is no night, nay, nor terror thereof. From the western clouds were the flame and gold withdrawn, and the winds sighed from the mountains, as vexed for passing days. The winds sighed from the mountains, and the mists came mustering to the glens; the sea crept out on long, bird-haunted,wailing, and piping sands, nought to be seen of it, its presence obvious only in the scent of wrack and the wash on the pebbled beaches. Behind the town the woods lay black and haunted, and through them, and far upward in the valley, dripping in the rain and clamorous with hidden burns and secret wells, went the highway to the world, vacant of aught visible, but never to be wholly vacant, since whoso passes on a highway ever after leaves some wandering spirit there. Did the child, that night, think of the highway that had carried her from home? In the hoarsely crying city did she pause a moment to remember and retrace her way to the little town that now lay faintly glowing in the light of its own internal fires?
Thus Bell wondered, standing at her window, looking into the solitary street. Every mile of separating highway rose before her,—she walked them in the rain and dark; all the weary longing of the world came down on her that mirk night in September, and praying that discretion should preserve and understanding keep her wanderer, she arrived at the soul’s tranquillity, and heard without misgiving the wild geese cry.
Her brother took the Books, and the three of them—master, mistress, and maid—were one in the spirit of worship, longing, and hope. Where, then, I wonder, had gone Daniel Dyce, the lawyer, the gentle ironist, on whose lips so often was kindly mockery, on whose tongue levity or its pretence—
“Never by passion quite possess’d,And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway”?
It was Bell’s nightly duty to turn the lamp out in the lobby and bolt the outer door. She went this night reluctant to perform that office, but a thought possessed her of a child from home, somewhere in the darkness among strangers, and she had to call her brother.
“What is it?” said he.
“The door,” she said, ashamed of herself, “I cannot bolt it,”
He looked at her flushed face and her trembling hand, and understood. “It’s only the door of a house,” said he; “thatmakes no difference,” and ran the bolt into its staple.
Forall the regrets of increasing age there is one alleviation among many, that days apart from those we love pass the quicker, even as our hurrying years. Thus it is that separations are divested of more and more of their terrors the nearer we are to that final parting which wipes out all, and is but the going to a great reunion. So the first fortnight, whereof Miss Bell thought to cheat the almanac under the delusion that Bud’s absence would then scarcely be appreciated, was in truth the period when she missed her most, and the girl was back for her Christmas holidays before half of her threepenny-bits for the plate were done.
It was worth a year of separation to see her come in at the door, rosy from the frosty air, with sparkling eyes and the old, sweet, rippling laugh, not—outside at least—an atom different from the girl who had gone away; and it made up to Bud herself for many evenings home-sick on an Edinburgh pillow to smell again the old celestial Christmas grocery and feel the warmth of her welcome.
Myself, I like to be important—not of such consequence to the world as to have it crick its neck with having to look up at me, but now and then important only to a few old friends; and Bud, likewise, could always enjoy the upper seat, if the others of her company were never below the salt. She basked in the flattery that Kate’s deportment gave to her dignity as a young lady educated at tremendous cost.
It was the daft days of her first coming over again;but this time she saw all with older eyes,—and, besides, the novelty of the little Scottish town was ended. Wanton Wully’s bell, pealing far beyond the burgh bounds,—commanding, like the very voice of God, to every ear of that community, no matter whether it rang at morn or eve,—gave her at once a crystal notion of the smallness of the place, not only in its bounds of stone and mortar, but in its interests, as compared with the city, where a thousand bells, canorous on the Sabbath, failed, it was said, to reach the ears of more than a fraction of the people. The bell, and John Taggart’s band on Hogmanay, and the little shops with windows falling back already on timid appeals, and the grey high tenements pierced by narrow entries, and the douce and decent humdrum folk,—she saw them with a more exacting vision, and Ailie laughed to hear them all summed up as “quaint.”
“I wondered when you would reach ‘quaint,’” said Auntie Ailie; “it was due some time ago, but this is a house where you never hear the word. Had you remained at the Pige— at the Misses Duff’s Seminary Miss Amelia would have had you sewing it on samplers, if samplers any longer were the fashion.”
“Is it not a nice word ‘quaint’?” asked Bud, who, in four months among critics less tolerant (and perhaps less wise) than the Dyces, had been compelled to rid herself of many transatlantic terms and phrases.
“There’s nothing wrong with ‘quaint,’ my dear,” said Miss Ailie; “it moves in the most exclusive circles: if I noticed it particularly, it is because it is the indication of a certain state of mind, and tells me where you stand in your education more clearly than your first quarterly report. I came home from school with ‘quaint’ myself: it not only seemed to save a lot of trouble by being a word which could be applied to anything not otherwise describable, but I cherished it because its use conferred on me a kind of inward glow of satisfaction like—like—like Aunt Bell’shome-made ginger-cordial. ‘Quaint,’ Bud, is the shibboleth of boarding-school culture: when you can use the word in the proper place, with a sense of superiority to the thing so designated, you are practically a young lady and the polish is taking on.”
“They all say it in our school,” explained Bud apologetically; “at least, all except The Macintosh,—I couldn’t think of her saying it somehow.”
“Who’s The Macintosh?” asked Ailie.
“Why! was there no Macintosh in your time?” exclaimed Bud. “I thought she went away back to the—to the Roman period. She’s the funniest old lady in the land, and comes twice a-week to teach us dancing and deportment. She’s taught them to mostly all the nobility and gentry of Scotland; she taught Lady Anne and all her brothers when they were in St Andrews.”
“I never heard of her,” said Ailie; “she must be—be—be decidedly quaint.”
“She’s so quaint you’d think she’d be kept in a corner cupboard with a bag of camphor at the back to scare the moths away. She’s a little wee mite, not any bigger than me—than I,—and they say she’s seventy years old, but sometimes she doesn’t look a day more than forty-five if it weren’t for her cap and her two front teeth missing. She’s got the loveliest fluffy silver hair—pure white, like Mrs Molyneux’s Aunt Tabitha’s Persian cat; cheeks like an apple, hands as young as yours, and when she walks across a room she glides like this, so you’d think she was a cutter yacht—”
Bud sailed across the parlour to represent the movement of The Macintosh with an action that made her aunties laugh, and the dog gave one short yelp of disapproval.
“That was the way that Grandma Buntain walked,—it used to be considered most genteel,” said Bell. “They trained girls up to do it with a back-board and a book on the top of the head; but it was out before my time; we just walked anyway in Barbara Mushet’sSeminary, where the main things were tambouring and the Catechism.”
“Miss Macintosh is a real lady,” Bud went on. “She’s got genuine old ancestors. They owned a Highland place called Kaims, and the lawyers have almost lawyered it a’ awa’ she says, so now she’s simply got to help make a living teaching dancing and deportment. I declare I don’t know what deportment is no more than the child unborn, unless it’s shutting the door behind you, walking into a room as if your head and your legs were your own, keeping your shoulders back, and being polite and kind to everybody, and I thought folks ’d do all that without attending classes, unless they were looney. Miss Macintosh says they are thesine qua nonand principal branches for a well-bred young lady in these low days of clingy frocks and socialism; but the Principal she just smiles and gives us another big block of English history. Miss Macintosh doesn’t let on, but I know she simply can’t stand English history, for she tells us, spells between quadrilles, that there hasn’t been any history anywhere since the Union of the Parliaments, except the Rebellion of 1745. But she doesn’t call it a rebellion. She calls it ‘yon affair.’She’sScotch! I tell you, Auntie Bell, you’d love to meet her! I sit, and sit, and look at her like—like a cat. She wears spectacles, just a little clouded, only she doesn’t call them spectacles; she says they are preserves, and that her eyes are as good as anybody’s. They’re bright enough, I tell you, for over seventy.”
“Indeed I would like to see the creature!” exclaimed Miss Bell. “She must be an original! I’m sometimes just a trifle tired of the same old folk about me here,—I know them all so well, and all they’re like to do or say, that there’s nothing new or startling to be expected from them.”
“Would you like to see her?” said Bud quickly; “then—then, some day I’ll tell her, and I’ll bet she’ll come. She dresses queer—like a lady in the ‘Schoolfor Scandal,’ and wears long mittens like Miss Minto, and when our music-master, Herr Laurent, is round she makes goo-goo eyes at him fit to crack her glasses. ‘Oh, Hair-r-r!’ she says, sitting with her mitts in her lap,—‘oh, Hair-r-r! can you no’ give the young ladies wise-like Scotch sangs, instead o’ that dreich Concone?’ And sometimes she’ll hit him with a fan. He says she plays the piano to our dancing the same as it was a spinet.”
“I declare it beats all!” said Miss Bell. “Does the decent old body speak Scotch?”
“Sometimes. When she’s making goo-goo eyes at the Herr, or angry, or finding fault with us but doesn’t want to hurt our feelings.”
“I can understand that,” said Miss Bell, with a patriot’s fervour; “there’s nothing like the Scotch for any of them; I fall to it myself when I’m sentimental. And so does your Uncle Dan.”
“She says she’s the last of the real Macintoshes,—that all the rest you see on Edinburgh signboards are only incomers or poor de-degenerate cadets; and I guess the way she says it, being a de-degenerate cadet Macintosh must be the meanest thing under the cope and canopy. Heaps of those old ancestors of hers went out in the days of the clans, fighting for any royalty that happened along. She’s got all their hair in lockets, and makes out that when they disappeared Scotland got a pretty hard knock. I said to her once the same as Aunt Ailie says to you, Aunt Bell, ‘English and Scots, I s’pose we’re all God’s people, and it’s a terribly open little island to be quarrelling in, seeing all the Continent can hear us quite plain’; but she didn’t like it. She said it was easy seen I didn’t understand the dear old Highland mountains, where her great-great-grandfather, Big John of the Axe, could collect five hundred fighting-men if he wagged a fiery cross at them. ‘I have Big John’s blood in me!’ she said, quite white, and her head shaking so much her preserves nearly fell off her nose. ‘I’ve Big John’s blood in me; and when Ithink of things,I hate the very name o’ thae aboaminable English!’ ‘Why, you’ve never seen them, Miss Macintosh,’ I said—for I knew she’d never had a foot outside Scotland. ‘No,’ said she, quite sharp, ‘and I don’t want to; for they might be nice enough, and then I wad be bound to like them.’”
“Oh, Bell!” cried Ailie, laughing, “Miss Macintosh is surely your doppelganger.”
“I don’t know what a doppelganger is,” said Auntie Bell; “but she’s a real sensible body, and fine I would like to see her.”
“Then I’ll have to fix it somehow,” said Bud, with emphasis. “P’raps you’ll meet her when you come to Edinburgh—”
“I’m not there yet, my dear.”
“—Or she might be round this way by-and-by. She’d revel in this place; she’d maybe not call it quaint, but she’d find it pretty careless about being in the—in the modern rush she talks about, and that would make her happier than a letter from home. I believe The Macintosh—”
“Miss Macintosh, my dear,” said Bell reprovingly, and the girl reddened.
“Iknow,” said she. “It’s mean to talk of her same as she was a waterproof, and I often try not to, because I like her immensely; but it’s so common among the girls that I forget. I believe Miss Macintosh would love this place, and could stop in it for ever.”
“Couldn’t you?” asked Auntie Ailie slyly.
Bud hesitated. “Well, I—I like it,” said she. “I just love to lie awake nights and think about it, and I can hear the wind in the trees and the tide come in, and the bell, and the wild geese; and family worship at the Provost’s on Sunday nights, and I can almostbehere, I think so powerfully about it; but—but—”
She stopped short, for she saw a look of pain in the face of her Auntie Bell.
“But what?” said the latter sharply.
“Oh! I’m a wicked, cruel, ungrateful girl, Auntie Bell; and I ought to want to love this place so much, nobody could push me out of it. And Idolove it; but I feel if I lived here always I’d not grow any more.”
“You’re big enough,” said Auntie Bell. “You’re as big as myself now.”
“I mean inside. Am I a prig, Aunt Ailie? I’d hate to be a prig! But I’d hate as bad to tell a lie; and I feel I’d never learn half so much or do half so much here as I’d do where thousands of folk were moving along in a procession, and I was with them too. A place like this is like a kindergarten—it’s good enough as far’s it goes, but it doesn’t teach the higher branches.”
Bell gazed at her in wonder and pity and blame, shaking her head. All this was what she had anticipated.
“I know the feeling,” said Aunt Ailie, “for I have shared it myself; and sometimes still it will come back to me, but in my better hours I think I’m wiser and can be content. If there is growth in you, you will grow anywhere. You were born in the noise of Chicago, Bud, and I suppose it’s hard to get it out of the ears. By-and-by I hope you’ll find that we are all of us most truly ourselves not in the crowd but when we are alone, and that not the smallest hamlet in the world need be intellectually narrow for any one with imagination, some books, and a cheerful constitution. Do you understand that, Bud?”
Bud thought hard for a moment and then shook her head. “It sounds as if it ought to be true,” said she, “and I daresay you think just now it is true; but I simply can’t believe it.” And all of them turned at the sound of a chuckling laugh, to find that Mr Dyce had heard this frank confession.
“That’s the worst of you, Bud,” said he. “You will never let older folk do your thinking for you.”
Itis another mercy, too, that in our age we learn to make the best of what aforetime might be ill to thole, as Bell made fine new garments out of old ones faded by turning them outside in and adding frills and flounces. Bud’s absence early ceased to be deplorable, since it wakened cheerful expectations not to be experienced had she stayed at home; gave rise to countless fond contrivances for her happiness in exile; and two or three times a-year to periods of bliss, when her vacations gave the house of Dyce the very flower of ecstasy. Her weekly letters of themselves were almost compensation for her absence. On the days of their arrival, Peter the post would come blithely whistling with his M.C. step to the lawyer’s kitchen window before he went to the castle itself, defying all routine and the laws of the Postmaster-General, for he knew Miss Dyce would be waiting feverishly, having likely dreamt the night before of happy things that—dreams going by contraries, as we all of us know in Scotland—might portend the most dreadful tidings.
Bud’s envelope was always on the top of his budget. For the sake of it alone (it sometimes seemed to Peter and those who got it) had the mail come splashing through the night,—the lawyer’s big blue envelopes, as it were, had got but a friendly lift through the courtesy of clerks in Edinburgh, and the men on the railway train, and the lad who drove the gig from Maryfield. What were big blue envelopes of the business world compared with the modest little square of grey with Lennox Dyce’s writing on it?
“Here’s the usual! Pretty thick to-day!” would Peter say, with a smack of satisfaction on the window-sash. Ah, those happy Saturdays! Everybody knew about them. “And how’s hersel’?” the bell-ringer would ask in the by-going, not altogether because his kindly interest led to an eye less strict on his lazy moods in the garden. One Fair day, when Maggie White’s was irresistible, it rang so merrily with drovers, and he lost the place again, he stopped the lawyer on the street to ask him what Miss Lennox thought of all this argument about the Churches, seeing she was in the thick of it in Edinburgh.
“Never you mind the argument, Will,” said Daniel Dyce,—“you do your duty by the Auld Kirk bell; and as for the Free folk’s quarrelling, amang them be’t!”
“But can you tell me, Mr D-D-Dyce,” said Wanton Wully, with as much assurance as if he was prepared to pay by the Table of Fees, “what’s the difference between the U.F.’s and the Frees? I’ve looked at it from every point, and I canna see it.”
“Come and ask me some day when you’re sober,” said the lawyer, and Wanton Wully snorted.
“If I was sober,” said he, “I wouldna want to ken—I wouldna give a curse.”
Yet each time Bud came home she seemed, to the mind of her Auntie Bell, a little farther off from them—a great deal older, a great deal less dependent, making for womanhood in a manner that sometimes was astounding, as when sober issues touched her, set her thinking, made her talk in fiery ardours. Aunt Ailie gloried in that rapid growth; Aunt Bell lamented, and spoke of brains o’ertaxed and fevered, and studies that were dangerous. She made up her mind a score of times to go herself to Edinburgh and give a warning to the teachers; but the weeks passed, and the months, and by-and-by the years, till almost three were gone, and the Edinburgh part of Lennox’s education was drawing to a close, and the warning visit was still to pay.
It was then, one Easter, came The Macintosh.
Bell and Ailie were out that afternoon for their daily walk in the woods or along the shore, when Mr Dyce returned from the Sheriff Court alert and buoyant, feeling much refreshed at the close of an encounter with a lawyer who, he used to say, was better at debating than himself, having more law books in his possession and a louder voice. Letting himself in with his pass-key, he entered the parlour, and was astonished to find a stranger, who rose at his approach and revealed a figure singular though not unpleasing. There was something ludicrous in her manner as she moved a step or two from the chair in which she had been sitting. Small, and silver-grey in the hair, with a cheek that burned—it must be with embarrassment—between a rather sallow neck and sunken temples, and wearing smoked spectacles with rims of tortoise-shell, she would have attracted attention anywhere even if her dress had been less queer. Queer it was, but in what manner Daniel Dyce was not the person to distinguish. To him there was about it nothing definitely peculiar, except that the woman wore a crinoline, a Paisley shawl of silken white, and such a bonnet as he had not seen since Grandma Buntain’s time.
“Be seated, ma’am,” said he; “I did not know I had the honour of a visitor,” and he gave a second, keener glance, that swept the baffling figure from the flounced green poplin to the snow-white lappet of her bonnet. A lady certainly,—that was in the atmosphere, however odd might be her dress. “Where in the world has this one dropped from?” he asked himself, and waited an explanation.
“Oh, Mr Dyce!” said the lady in a high, shrill voice, that plainly told she never came from south of the Border, and with a certain trepidation in her manner; “I’m feared I come at an inconvenient time to ye, and I maybe should hae bided at your office; but they tell’t me ye were out at what they ca’d a Pleading Diet. I’ve come about my mairrage.”
“Your marriage!” said the lawyer, scarcely hiding his surprise.
“Yes, my mairrage!” she repeated sharply, drawing the silken shawl about her shoulders, bridling. “There’s naething droll, I hope and trust, in a maiden lady ca’in’ on a writer for his help about her settlements!”
“Not at all—not at all, ma’am,” said Daniel Dyce. “I’m honoured in your confidence.” And he pushed his spectacles up on his brow that he might see her less distinctly and have the less inclination to laugh at such an eccentric figure.
She broke into a torrent of explanation. “Ye must excuse me, Mr Dyce, if I’m put-about and gey confused, for it’s little I’m acquent wi’ lawyers. A’ my days I’ve heard o’ naething but their quirks, for they maistly rookit my grandfaither. And I cam’ wi’ the coach frae Maryfield, and my heart’s in a palpitation wi’ sic briengin’ and bangin’ ower heughs and hills—” She placed a mittened hand on a much-laced stomacher, and sighed profoundly.
“Perhaps—perhaps a glass of wine—” began the lawyer, with his eye on the bell-pull, and a notion in his head that wine and a little seed-cake someway went with crinolines and the age of the Paisley shawl.
“No, no!” she cried extravagantly. “I never lip it; I’m—I’m in the Band o’ Hope.”
The lawyer started, and scanned her again through his glasses, with a genial chuckling crow. “So’s most maiden ladies, ma’am,” said he. “I’m glad to congratulate you on your hopes being realised.”
“It remains to be seen,” said the visitor. “Gude kens what may be the upshot. The maist deleeberate mairrage maun be aye a lottery, as my Auntie Grizel o’ the Whinhill used to say; and I canna plead that mine’s deleeberate, for the man just took a violent fancy the very first nicht he set his een on me, fell whummlin’ at my feet, and wasna to be put aff wi’‘No’ or ‘Maybe.’ We’re a puir weak sex, Mr Dyce, and men’s sae domineerin’!”
She ogled him through her clouded glasses: her arch smile showed a blemish of two front teeth amissing. He gave a nod of sympathy, and she was off again. “And to let ye ken the outs and ins o’t, Mr Dyce, there’s a bit o’ land near Perth that’s a’ that’s left o’ a braw estate my forebears squandered in the Darien. What I want to ken is, if I winna could hinder him that’s myfiancéfrae dicin’ or drinkin’ ’t awa’ ance he got me mairried to him? I wad be sair vexed at ony such calamity, for my family hae aye been barons.”
“Ance a baron aye a baron,” said the lawyer, dropping into her own broad Scots.
“Yes, Mr Dyce, that’s a’ very fine; but baron or baroness, if there’s sic a thing, ’s no great figure wantin’ a bit o’ grun’ to gang wi’ the title; and John Cleghorn—that’s my intended’s name—has been a gey throughither chiel in his time by a’ reports, and I doubt wi’ men it’s the aulder the waur.”
“I hope in this case it’ll be the aulder the wiser, Miss—” said the lawyer, and hung unheeded on the note of interrogation.
“I’ll run nae risks if I can help it,” said the lady emphatically; “and I’ll no’ put my trust in the Edinburgh lawyers either: they’re a’ tarred wi’ the ae stick, or I sair misjudge them. But I’m veesitin’ a cousin owerby at Maryfield, and I’m tell’t there’s no’ a man that’s mair dependable in a’ the shire than yoursel’, so I just cam’ ower ains errand for a consultation. Oh, that unco’ coach! the warld’s gane wud, Mr Dyce, wi’ hurry and stramash, and Scotland’s never been the same since— But there! I’m awa’ frae my story; if it’s the Lord’s will that I’m to marry Johnny Cleghorn, what comes o’ Kaims? Will he be owner o’t?”
“Certainly not, ma’am,” said Mr Dyce, with a gravity well preserved considering his inward feelings. “Even before the Married Women’s Property Act,hisjus mariti, as we ca’ it, gave him only his wife’s personal and moveable estate. There is no such thing ascommunio bonorum—as community of goods—between husband and wife in Scotland.”
“And he canna sell Kaims on me?”
“No; it’s yours and your assignsad perpetuam remanentiam, being feudal right.”
“I wish ye wad speak in honest English, like mysel’, Mr Dyce,” said the lady sharply. “I’ve forgotten a’ my Laiten, and the very sound o’t gars my heid bizz. I doubt it’s the lawyer’s way o’ gettin’ round puir helpless bodies.”
“It’s scarcely that,” said Mr Dyce, laughing. “It’s the only chance we get to air auld Mr Trayner, and it’s thought to be imposin’.Ad perpetuam remanentiamjust means to remain for ever.”
“I thocht that maybe John might hae the poo’er to treat Kaims as my tocher.”
“Even if he had,” said Mr Dyce, “adot, ordos, or tocher, in the honest law of Scotland, was never the price o’ the husband’s hand; he could only use the fruits o’t. He is not entitled to dispose of it, and must restore it intact if unhappily the marriage should at any time be dissolved.”
“Dissolved!” cried the lady. “Fegs! ye’re in an awfu’ hurry, and the ring no’ bought yet. Supposin’ I was deein’ first?”
“In that case I presume that you would have the succession settled on your husband.”
“On Johnny Cleghorn! Catch me! There’s sic a thing as—as—as bairns, Mr Dyce,” and the lady simpered coyly, while the lawyer rose hurriedly to fumble with some books and hide his confusion at such a wild conjecture. He was relieved by the entrance of Bell and Ailie, who stood amazed at the sight of the odd and unexpected visitor.
“My sisters,” said the lawyer hastily. “Miss—Miss—I did not catch the name.”
“Miss Macintosh,” said the stranger nervously, and Bell cried out immediately, “I was perfectlyassured of it! Lennox has often spoken of you, and I’m so glad to see you. I did not know you were in the neighbourhood.”
Ailie was delighted with so picturesque a figure. She could scarcely keep her eyes off the many-flounced, expansive gown of poplin, the stomacher, the ponderous ear-rings, the great cameo brooch, the long lace mittens, the Paisley shawl, the neat poke-bonnet, and the fresh old face marred only by the spectacles, and the gap where the teeth were missing.
“I have just been consultin’ Mr Dyce on my comin’ mairrage,” said The Macintosh; and at this intelligence from a piece of such antiquity Miss Bell’s face betrayed so much astonishment that Dan and Ailie almost forgot their good manners.
“Oh! if it’s business—” said Bell, and rose to go; but The Macintosh put a hand on her sleeve and stayed her.
“Ye needna fash to leave, Miss Dyce,” said she. “A’thing’s settled. It seems that Johnny Cleghorn canna ca’ a rig o’ Kaims his ain when he mairries me, and that was a’ I cam’ to see about. Oh, it’s a mischancy thing a mairrage, Miss Dyce; maist folk gang intill’t heels-ower-hurdies, but I’m in an awfu’ swither, and havena a mither to guide me.”
“Keep me!” said Miss Bell, out of all patience at such maidenly apprehensions, “ye’re surely auld enough to ken your ain mind. I hope the guidman’s worthy.”
“He’s no’ that ill—as men-folk gang,” said The Macintosh resignedly. “He’s as fat’s creish, and has a craighlin’ cough, the body, and he’s faur frae bonny, and he hasna a bawbee o’ his ain, and sirs! what a reputation! But a man’s a man, Miss Dyce, and time’s aye fleein’.”
At such a list of disabilities in a husband the Dyces lost all sense of the proprieties and broke into laughter, in which the lady joined them, shaking in her arm-chair. Bell was the first to recover with a guilty sense that this was very bad for Daniel’sbusiness. She straightened her face and was about to make apologies, when Footles bounded in at the open door, to throw himself at the feet of The Macintosh and wave a joyous tail. But he was not content there. In spite of her resistance, he must be in her lap, and then, for the first time, Bell and Ailie noticed a familiar cadence in the stranger’s laugh.
Dan rose and clapped her on the back. “Well done, Bud!” said he. “Ye had us a’; but Footles wasna to be swindled wi’ an auld wife’s goon,” and he gently drew the spectacles from the laughing eyes of his naughty niece!
“Oh, you rogue!” cried Auntie Ailie.
“You wretch!” cried Auntie Bell. “I might have known your cantrips. Where in the world did you get these clothes?”
Bud sailed across the room like a cutter yacht and put her arms about her neck. “Didn’t you know me?” she asked.
“How could I know you, dressed up like that? And your teeth—you imp! they’re blackened; and your neck—you jad! it’s painted; and—oh, lassie, lassie! Awa’! awa’! the deil’s ower grit wi’ ye!”
“Didn’tyouknow me, Aunt Ailie?” asked Bud.
“Not in the least,” said Ailie, taking the droll old figure in her arms. “Perhaps I might have known you if I didn’t think it was to-morrow you were coming.”
“It was to have been to-morrow; but the measles have broken out in school, and I came a day earlier, and calculated I’d just hop in and surprise you all. Didn’t you guess, Uncle Dan?”
“Not at first,” said he. “I’ll admit I was fairly deceived, but when you talked about being in the Band of Hope I saw at a shot through The Macintosh. I hope you liked my Latin, Bud.”