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Title: The Daft Days

Author: Neil Munro

Release date: September 7, 2015 [eBook #49906]

Language: English

Credits: This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAFT DAYS ***


credit



This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

                         _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_.

                               * * * * *

                  UNIFORM EDITION, Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.

DOOM CASTLE.  A ROMANCE.

    "He may now be ranked with absolute confidence among the small
    company of novelists whose work really counts as
    literature."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.

    "Inspires reader and reviewer with deep gratitude and
    admiration."--_Spectator_.

JOHN SPLENDID.  THE TALE OF A POOR GENTLEMAN AND THE LITTLE WARS OF
LORNE.

    "A masterly and most interesting novel."--_Times_.

    "An achievement of rare merit and distinction."--_Pall Mall
    Gazette_.

THE LOST PIBROCH, AND OTHER SHEILING STORIES.

Mr ANDREW LANG says: "In 'The Lost Pibroch' we meet genius as obvious
and undeniable as that of Mr Kipling.  Mr Munro's powers are directed
to old Highland life, and he does what genius alone can do--he makes
it alive again, and makes our imagination share its life--his
knowledge being copious, original, at first hand."

CHILDREN OF TEMPEST.

    "More than a good story.  It is a downright good book, realistic,
    powerful, and effective, absolutely perfect in its picturing of
    the simple, sturdy seafolk of Uist and the Outer Isles of the
    West."--_Daily Telegraph_.

SHOES OF FORTUNE.

    "Readable from cover to cover."--_Evening Standard_.

GILIAN THE DREAMER.

    "We earnestly hope Mr Munro will give us more of such
    things."--_Liverpool Courier_.

                               * * * * *

            WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

                             _The Daft Days_


                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                                NEIL MUNRO

                                AUTHOR OF
             'JOHN SPLENDID,' 'THE LOST PIBROCH,' ETC., ETC.

                                * * * * *

                            _SHILLING EDITION_

                                * * * * *

                        WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
                           EDINBURGH AND LONDON
                                  MCMIX

                                * * * * *

                          _All Rights reserved_

                                * * * * *




CHAPTER I.


THE town's bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer
little jolts and pauses, as if Wanton Wully Oliver, the ringer, had been
jovial the night before.  A blithe New-Year-time bell; a droll, daft,
scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarums, no solemn reminders that
commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think
upon things undone, the brevity of days and years, the parting of good
company, but a cheery ditty--"boom, boom, ding-a-dong boom, boom ding,
hic, ding-dong," infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish
gaiety.  The burgh town turned on its pillows, drew up its feet from the
bed-bottles, last night hot, now turned to chilly stone, rubbed its eyes,
and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come.  It cast
a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosy beds.
"Wanton Wully's on the ran-dan!" said the folk, and rose quickly, and ran
to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on window-ledges
cushioned deep in snow.  The children hugged themselves under the
blankets, and told each other in whispers it was not a porridge morning,
no, nor Sunday, but a breakfast of shortbread, ham and eggs; and behold!
a beautiful loud drum, careless as 'twere a reveille of hot wild youths,
began to beat in a distant lane.  Behind the house of Dyce the lawyer, a
cock that must have been young and hearty crew like to burst; and at the
stables of the post-office the man who housed his horses after bringing
the morning mail through night and storm from a distant railway station
sang a song,--

"A damsel possessed of great beauty
   Stood near by her own father's gate:
The gallant hussars were on duty;
   To view them this maiden did wait.
Their horses were capering and prancing,
   Their accoutrements shone like a star;
From the plains they were quickly advancing,--
   She espied her own gallant hussar."

"Mercy on us! six o'clock!" cried Miss Dyce, with a startled jump from
her dreams to the floor of her bedroom.  "Six o'clock on the New Year's
morning, and I'll warrant that randy Kate is sound asleep yet," she said,
and quickly clad herself and went to the head of the stair and cried,
"Kate, Kate! are ye up yet, Kate?  Are ye hearing me, Kate MacNeill?"

From the cavern dark of the lower storey there came back no answer.

She stood with a curious twirly wooden candlestick in her hand in the
midst of a house that was dead dumb and desperate dark, and smelled
deliciously of things to eat.  Even herself, who had been at the making
of most of them the day before, and had, by God's grace, still much of a
child's appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at
this air of a celestial grocery--of plum-puddings and currant-buns,
apples and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly
sweet we call Black Man,--her face lit rosily by the candle lowe, a woman
small and soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a
briskness of body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years.
What they were I will never tell you; but this I'll say, that even if
they had been eighty she was the kind to cheerily dance quadrille.  The
daft bell, so plainly in the jovial mood of Wanton Wully Oliver, infected
her: she smiled to herself in a way she had when remembering droll things
or just for simple jollity, and whoever saw Bell Dyce smile to herself
had never the least doubt after that she was a darling.  Over the
tenements of the town the song of the bell went rollicking, and in its
hiccupping pauses went wonderfully another sound far, far removed in
spirit and suggestion--the clang of wild geese calling: the "honk, honk"
of the ganders and the challenge of their ladies come down adrift in the
snow from the bitter north.

But there was no answer from the maid in the kitchen.  She had rolled
less deliberately than was usual from her blankets to the summons of the
six o'clock bell, and already, with the kitchen window open, her
bounteous form surged over the two sashes that were always so
conveniently low and handy for a gossip with any friendly passer-by on
the pavement.  She drank the air of the clean chill morning dark, a heady
thing like old Tom Watson's autumn ale, full of the sentiment of the daft
days.  She tilted an ear to catch the tune of the mail-boy's song that
now was echoing mellow from the cobwebbed gloom of the stable stalls, and
making a snowball from the drift of the window-ledge she threw it,
womanwise, aimlessly into the street with a pretence at combat.  The
chill of the snow stung sweet in the hot palm of her, for she was young
and strong.

"Kate, you wretch!" cried a voice behind her.  She drew in her head, to
find her mistress in the kitchen with the candlestick in her hand.

"Oh, m'em," cried the maid, no way abashed, banging up the window and
hurriedly crushing her more ample parts under the final hooks and eyes of
her morning wrapper--"oh, m'em, what a start you gave me!  I'm all in a
p-p-palpitation.  I was just takin' one mouthful of air and thinkin' to
myself yonder in the Gaelic that it was time for me to be comin' in and
risin' right."

"A Happy New Year to you, Kate MacNeill," said the mistress, taking her
hand.

"Just that, just that! and the same to you yourself, Miss Dyce.  I'm
feeling fine; I'm that glad with everything," said the maid, in some
confusion at this unusual relation with her mistress.  She shook the
proffered hand rapidly from side to side as if it were an egg-switch.

"And see and get the fires on quick now, like a good lass.  It would
never do to be starting the New Year late,--it would be unlucky.  I was
crying to you yonder from the stair-head, and wondering if you were ill,
that you did not answer me so quickly as you do for ordinar'."

"Ill, Miss Dyce!" cried the maid astounded.  "Do you think I'm daft to be
ill on a New Year's day?"

"After yon--after yon shortbread you ate yesterday I would not have
wondered much if you were," said Miss Dyce, shaking her head solemnly.
"I'm not complaining, but, dear me! it was an awful lump; and I thought
it would be a bonny-like thing too, if our first-foot had to be the
doctor."

"Doctor!  I declare to goodness I never had need of a doctor to me since
Dr Macphee in Colonsay put me in order with oil and things after I had
the measles," exclaimed the maid, as if mankind were like wag-at-the-wa'
clocks and could be guaranteed to go right for years if you blew through
them with a pair of bellows, or touched their works with an oily feather.

"Never mind about the measles just now, Kate," said Miss Dyce, with a
meaning look at the blackout fire.

"Neither I was mindin' them, m'em,--I don't care a spittle for them; it's
so long ago I would not know them if I saw them; I was just--"

"But get your fire on.  You know we have a lot to do to-day to get
everything nice and ready for my nephew who comes from America with the
four o'clock coach."

"America!" cried the maid, dropping a saucepan lid on the floor in her
astonishment.  "My stars!  Did I not think it was from Chickagoo?"

"And Chicago is in America, Kate," said her mistress.

"Is it? is it?  Mercy on me, how was Kate to know?  I only got part of my
education,--up to the place where you carry one and add ten.  America!
Dear me, just fancy!  The very place that I'm so keen to go to.  If I had
the money, and was in America--"

It was a familiar theme; Kate had not got fully started on it when her
mistress fled from the kitchen and set briskly about her morning affairs.

And gradually the household of Dyce the lawyer awoke wholly to a day of
unaccustomed stillness and sound, for the deep snow piled in the street
and hushed the traffic of wheel, and hoof, and shoe, but otherwise the
morning was cheerful with New Year's day noise.  For the bell-ringing of
Wanton Wully was scarcely done, died down in a kind of brazen chuckle,
and the "honk, honk" of the wild geese sped seaward over gardens and back
lanes, strange wild music of the north, far-fetched and undomestic,--when
the fife band shrilly tootled through the town to the tune of "Hey,
Johnny Cope, are ye waukin' yet?"  Ah, they were the proud, proud men,
their heads dizzy with glory and last night's wine, their tread on air.
John Taggart drummed--a mighty drummer, drunk or sober, who so loved his
instrument he sometimes went to bed with it still fastened to his neck,
and banged to-day like Banagher, who banged furiously, never minding the
tune much, but happy if so be that he made noise enough.  And the fifers
were not long gone down the town, all with the wrong step but Johnny
Vicar, as his mother thought, when the snow was trampled under the feet
of playing children, and women ran out of their houses, and crossed the
street, some of them, I declare, to kiss each other, for 'tis a fashion
lately come, and most genteel, grown wonderfully common in Scotland.
Right down the middle of the town, with two small flags in his hat and
holly in the lapel of his coat, went old Divine the hawker, with a great
barrow of pure gold, crying "Fine Venetian oranges! wha'll buy sweet
Venetian oranges?  Nane o' your foreign trash.  Oranges!  Oranges!--rale
New Year oranges, three a penny; bloods, a bawbee each!"

The shops opened just for an hour for fear anybody might want anything,
and many there were, you may be sure, who did, for they had eaten and
drunken everything provided the night before--which we call
Hogmanay,--and now there were currant-loaves and sweety biscuits to buy;
shortcake, sugar and lemons, ginger cordial for the boys and girls and
United Presbyterians, boiled ham for country cousins who might come
unexpected, and P. & A. MacGlashan's threepenny mutton-pies (twopence if
you brought the ashet back), ordinarily only to be had on fair-days and
on Saturdays, and far renowned for value.

Miss Minto's Millinery and Manteau Emporium was discovered at daylight to
have magically outlined its doors and windows during the night with
garlands and festoons of spruce and holly, whereon the white rose bloomed
in snow; and Miss Minto herself, in a splendid crimson cloak down to the
heels, and cheeks like cherries, was standing with mittens and her five
finger-rings on, in the middle door, saying in beautiful gentle English
"A Happy New Year" to every one who passed--even to George Jordon, the
common cowherd, who was always a little funny in his intellects, and,
because his trousers were bell-mouthed and hid his feet, could never
remember whether he was going to his work or coming from it, unless he
consulted the Schoolmaster.  "The same to you, m'em, excuse my hands,"
said poor George, just touching the tips of her fingers.  Then, because
he had been stopped and slewed a little from his course, he just went
back the way he had come.

Too late got up the red-faced sun, too late to laugh at Wanton Wully's
jovial bell, too late for Taggart's mighty drumming, but a jolly winter
sun,--'twas all that was wanted among the chimneys to make the day
complete.

First of all to rise in Dyce's house, after the mistress and the maid,
was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.

And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back
he was known as Cheery Dan.

"Your bath is ready, Dan," his sister had cried, and he rose and went
with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the
water.  It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which, men
never age, comes from high mountain bens.

"That for ye to-day!" said he to the bath, snapping his fingers.  "I'll
see ye far enough first!"  And contented himself with a slighter wash
than usual, and shaving.  As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his
habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was

"Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,"

with not much tone but a great conviction,--a tall, lean, clean-shaven
man of over fifty, with a fine long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen grey eyes,
and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open
it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands
into them.  And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of
his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest
of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the
weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he
went upstairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a
pencilled note, in which he wrote--

                           A NEW YEAR'S DAY PRESENT
                                FOR A GOOD BOY
                                     FROM
                       AN UNCLE WHO DOES NOT LIKE CATS.

He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for
its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was
seen the King's highway.  "Wonderful! wonderful!" he said to himself.
"They have made an extraordinary job of it.  Very nice indeed, but just a
shade ladylike.  A stirring boy would prefer fewer fal-lals."

There was little indeed to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in
that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its
looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover's-knots, its bower-like
bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of pot-pourri
and lavender.  A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when
she was in Miss Mushet's seminary, hung over the mantelpiece enjoining
all beholders to

                             WATCH AND PRAY.

Mr Dyce put both hands into his trousers pockets, bent a little, and
heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter.  "Man's whole duty, according to
Bell Dyce," he said, "'Watch and Pray'; but they do not need to have the
lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I'll warrant.  Yon's
the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the
prayer.  'Watch and Pray'--h'm!  It should be Watch _or_ Pray--it clearly
cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well
expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time."

He was humming "Star of Peace"--for the tune he started the morning with
usually lasted him all day,--and standing in the middle of the floor
contemplating with amusement the ladylike adornment of the room prepared
for his Chicago nephew, when a light step fell on the attic stairs, and a
woman's voice cried, "Dan!  Dan Dyce!  Coo-ee!"

He did not answer.

She cried again after coming up a step or two more, but still he did not
answer.  He slid behind one of the bed-curtains.




CHAPTER II.


ALISON DYCE came lightly up the rest of the stair, whistling blithely, in
spite of her sister Bell's old notion that whistling women and crowing
hens are never canny.  She swept into the room.  People in the
town--which has a forest of wood and deer behind it--used to say she had
the tread and carriage of a young wild roe, and I can well assure you she
was the girl to walk with on a winter day!  She had in her hand a book of
poems called 'The Golden Treasury' and a spray of the herb called
Honesty, that thrives in poor men's gardens.  Having laid them down on
the table without noticing her brother's extraordinary Present for a Good
Boy, she turned about and fondled things.  She smoothed the bed-clothes
as if they covered a child, she patted the chair-backs with an air of
benediction, she took cushions to her breast like one that cuddled them,
and when she touched the mantel-piece ornaments they could not help it
but must start to chime.  It was always a joy to see Alison Dyce
redding-up, as we say; though in housewifery, like sewing, knitting, and
cooking, she was only a poor second to her sister Bell.  She tried, from
duty, to like these occupations, but, oh dear! the task was beyond her:
whatever she had learned from her schooling in Edinburgh and Brussels, it
was not the darning of hose and the covering of rhubarb-tarts.

Her gift, said Bell, was management.

Tripping round the little attic, she came back by-and-by to the table at
the window to take one last wee glimpse inside 'The Golden Treasury,'
that was her own delight and her notion of happy half-hours for the ideal
boy, and her eye fell for the first time on the pea-sling and the note
beside it.

She read, and laughed, and upon my word, if laughter like Ailie Dyce's
could be bought in perforated rolls, there would be no demand for Chopin
and Schumann on the pianolas.  It was a laugh that even her brother could
not resist: a paroxysm of coughing burst from behind the curtains, and he
came out beside her chuckling.

"I reckoned without my hoast," said he, gasping.

"I was sure you were upstairs," said Alison.  "You silly man!  Upon my
word!  Where's your dignity, Mr Dyce?"

Dan Dyce stood for a second a little bit abashed, rubbing his chin and
blinking his eyes as if their fun was a thing to be kept from brimming
over.  "I'm a great wag!" said he.  "If it's dignity you're after, just
look at my velvet coat!" and so saying he caught the ends of his coat
skirts with his fingers, held them out at arm's-length, and turned round
as he might do at a fit-on in his tailor's, laughing till his hoast came
on again.  "Dignity, quo' she, just look at my velvet coat!"

"Dan, Dan! will you never be wise?" said Ailie Dyce, a humorsome
demoiselle herself, if you believe me.

"Not if I keep my health," said he.  "You have made a bonny-like show of
the old garret, between the two of you.  It's as smart as a lass at her
first ball."

"I think it's very nice; at least it might be worse," interrupted Alison
defensively, glancing round with satisfaction and an eye to the hang of
the frame round "Watch and Pray."  Bell's wool-work never agreed with her
notions, but, as she knew that her tarts never agreed with Bell, she
kept, on that point, aye discreetly dumb.

"Poor little Chicago!" said her brother.  "I'm vexed for the wee fellow.
Print chintz, or chint prints, or whatever it is; sampler texts, and
scent, and poetry books--what in the world is the boy to break?"

"Oh, you have seen to that department, Dan!" said Ailie, taking the
pea-sling again in her hand.  "'A New Year's Day Present for a Good Boy
from an Uncle who does not like Cats.'  I declare that _is_ a delightful
way of making the child feel quite at home at once."

"Tuts!  'Tis just a diversion.  I know it'll cheer him wonderfully to
find at the start that if there's no young folk in the house there's some
of the eternal Prank.  I suppose there are cats in Chicago.  He cannot
expect us to provide him with pigs, which are the usual domestic pets
there, I believe.  You let my pea-sling alone, Ailie; you'll find it will
please him more than all the poetry and pink bows.  I was once a boy
myself, and I know."

"You were never anything else," said Alison.  "And never will be anything
else.  It is a pity to let the child see at the very start what an
irresponsible person his uncle is; and besides, it's cruel to throw
stones at cats."

"Not at all, not at all!" said her brother briskly, with his head
quizzically to the side a little, in a way he had when debating in the
Court.  "I have been throwing stones for twenty years at those cats of
Rodger's that live in our garden and I never hit one yet.  They're all
about six inches too short for genuine sport.  If cats were Dachshund
dogs, and I wasn't so fond of dogs, I would be deadly.  But my ado with
cats is just one of the manly old British sports, like trout-fishing and
curling.  You take your fun out in anticipation, and the only difference
is you never need to carry a flask.  Still, I'm not without hope that my
nephew from Chicago may have a better aim than I have."

"You are an old--an old goose, Dan Dyce, and a Happy New Year to you!"
said his sister, putting her arms suddenly round his neck and kissing
him.

"Tuts! the coming of that child's ta'en your head," said the brother,
reddening, for sisters never kiss their own brothers in our part,--it's
so sentimental, it's so like the penny stories.  "A Good New Year to you,
Ailie," and "Tuts!" he said again, looking quite upset, till Ailie
laughed and put her arm through his and drew him downstairs to the
breakfast to which she had come to summon him.

The Chicago child's bedroom, left to itself, chilly a bit like Highland
weather, but honest and clean, looked more like a bower than ever: the
morning sun, peeping over garden trees and the chimneys of the lanes,
gazed particularly on the table where the pea-sling and the poetry book
lay together.

And now the town was thronged like a fair-day, with such stirring things
happening every moment in the street that the servant, Kate, had a
constant head out at the window, "putting by the time," as she explained
to the passing inquirer, "till the Mustress would be ready for the
breakfast."  That was Kate,--she had come from an island where they make
the most of everything that may be news, even if it's only brandy-sauce
to pudding at the minister's; and Miss Dyce could not start cutting a new
bodice or sewing a button on her brother's trousers but the maid billowed
out upon the window-sash to tell the tidings to the first of her sex that
passed.

Over the trodden snow she saw the people from the country crowd in their
Sunday clothes, looking pretty early in the day for gaiety, all with
scent on their handkerchiefs (which is the odour of festive days for a
hundred miles round burgh towns); and town people, less splendid in
attire, as folk that know the difference between a holiday and a Sabbath,
and leave their religious hard hats at home on a New Year's day;
children, too, replete with bun already, and all succulent with the juice
of Divine's oranges.  She heard the bell begin to peal again, for Wully
Oliver--fie on Wully Oliver!--had been met by some boys who told him the
six o'clock bell was not yet rung, and sent him back to perform an office
he had done with hours before.  He went to his bell dubiously, something
in the dizzy abyss he called his mind that half convinced him he had rung
it already.

"Let me pause and consider," he said once or twice when being urged to
the rope, scratching the hair behind his ears with both hands, his
gesture of reflection.  "Was there no' a bairn--an auld-fashioned
bairn--helped to ca' the bell already, and wanted to gie me money for the
chance?  It runs in my mind there was a bairn, and that she had us aye
boil-boiling away at eggs; but maybe I'm wrong, for I'll admit I had a
dram or two and lost the place.  I don't believe in dram-dram-dramming,
but I aye say if you take a dram, take it in the morning and you get the
good of it all day.  It's a tip I learned in the Crimea."  But at last
they convinced him the bairn was just imagination, and Wanton Wully
Oliver spat on his hands and grasped the rope, and so it happened that
the morning bell on the New Year's day on which my story opens was twice
rung.

The Dyce handmaid heard it pealing as she hung over the window-sash with
her cap agee on her head.  She heard from every quarter--from lanes,
closes, tavern rooms, high attics, and back-yards--fifes playing; it was
as if she leaned over a magic grove of great big birds, each singing its
own song--"Come to the Bower," or "Monymusk," or "The Girl I left Behind
Me," noble airs wherein the captain of the band looked for a certain
perfection from his musicians before they marched out again at midday.
"For," said he often in rehearsals, "anything will do in the way of a
tune in the dark, my sunny boys, but it must be the tiptop of skill, and
no discordancy, when the eyes of the world are on us.  One turn more at
'Monymusk,' sunny boys, and then we'll have a skelp at yon tune of my own
composure."

Besides the sound of the bell and the universal practice of the fifes
there were loud vocalists at the Cross, and such laughter in the street
that Kate was in an ecstasy.  Once, uplifted beyond all private decorum,
she kilted her gown and gave a step of a reel in her kitchen solitude.

"Isn't it cheery, the noise!" she exclaimed delightly to the
letter-carrier who came to the window with the morning's letters.  "Oh, I
am feeling beautiful!  It is--it is--it is just like being inside a pair
of bagpipes."

He was a man who roared, the postman, being used to bawling up long
common-stairs in the tenements for the people to come down to the foot
themselves for their letters--a man with one roguish eye for the maiden
and another at random.  Passing in the letters one by one, he said in
tones that on a quieter day might be heard half up the street, "Nothing
for you, yourself, personally, Kate, but maybe there'll be one to-morrow.
Three big blue anes and seven wee anes for the man o' business himsel',
twa for Miss Dyce (she's the wonderfu' correspondent!), and ane for Miss
Alison wi' the smell o' scented perfume on't--that'll be frae the Miss
Birds o' Edinburgh.  And I near forgot--here's a post-caird for Miss
Dyce: hearken to this--

"'Child arrived Liverpool yesterday; left this morning for Scotland.
Quite safe to go alone, charge of conductor.  Pip, pip!  Molyneux.'"

"Whatna child is it, Kate?"

"'Pip, pip!'  What in the world's 'Pip, pip'?  The child is brother
William's child, to be sure," said Kate, who always referred to the Dyce
relations as if they were her own.  "You have heard of brother William?"

"Him that was married on the play-actress and never wrote home?" shouted
the letter-carrier.  "He went away before my time.  Go on; quick, for I'm
in a desperate hurry this mornin'."

"Well, he died abroad in Chickagoo.  God have mercy on him dying so far
away from home, and him without a word of Gaelic in his head! and a
friend o' his father 's bringing the boy home to his aunties."

"Where in the world's Chickagoo?" bellowed the postman.

"In America, of course,--where else would it be but in America?" said
Kate contemptuously.  "Where is your education not to know that Chickagoo
is in America, where the servant-maids have a pound a-week of wages, and
learn the piano, and can get married when they like quite easy?"

"Bless me! do you say so?" cried the postman in amazement, and not
without a pang of jealousy.

"Yes, I say so!" said Kate in the snappish style she often showed to the
letter-carrier.  "And the child is coming this very day with the
coach-and-twice from Maryfield railway station--oh them trains! them
trains! with their accidents; my heart is in my mouth to think of a child
in them.  Will you not come round to the back and get the Mustress's New
Year dram?  She is going to give a New Year dram to every man that calls
on business this day.  But I will not let you in, for it is in my mind
that you would not be a lucky first-foot."

"Much obleeged," said the postman, "but ye needna be feared.  I'm not
allowed to go dramming at my duty.  It's offeecial, and I canna help it.
If it was not offeecial, there's few letter-carriers that wouldna need to
hae iron hoops on their heids to keep their brains from burstin' on the
day efter New Year."

Kate heard a voice behind her, and pulled her head in hurriedly with a
gasp, and a cry of "Mercy, the start I got!" while the postman fled on
his rounds.  Miss Dyce stood behind, in the kitchen, indignant.

"You are a perfect heartbreak, Kate," said the mistress.  "I have rung
for breakfast twice, and you never heard me, with your clattering out
there to the letter-carrier.  It's a pity you cannot marry the glee
party, as Mr Dyce calls him, and be done with it."

"Me marry him!" cried the maid indignantly.  "I think I see myself
marryin' a man like yon, and his eyes not neighbours."

"That's a trifle in a husband if his heart is good: the letter-carrier's
eyes may--may skew a little, but it's not to be wondered at, considering
the look-out he has to keep on all sides of him to keep out of reach of
every trollop in the town who wants to marry him."

And leaving Kate speechless at this accusation, the mistress of the house
took the letters from her hands and went to the breakfast-table with
them.

She had read the contents of the post-card before she reached the
parlour; its news dismayed her.

"Just imagine!" she cried.  "Here's that bairn on his way from Liverpool
his lee-lone, and not a body with him!"

"What! what!" cried Mr Dyce, whose eyes had been shut to say the grace.
"Isn't that actor-fellow, Molyneux, coming with him, as he promised?"

Miss Dyce sunk in a chair and burst into tears, crushing the post-card in
her hand.

"What does he say?" demanded her brother.

"He says--he says--oh, dear me!--he says 'Pip, pip!'" quoth the weeping
sister.




CHAPTER III.


"I MISDOUBTED Mr Molyneux from the very first," said Ailie, turning as
white as a clout.  "From all his post-cards he was plainly too casual.
Stop it, Bell, my dear--have sense; the child's in a Christian land, and
in care of somebody who is probably more dependable than this delightful
Molyneux."

Mr Dyce took out an old, thick, silver verge.  "Nine o'clock," he said,
with a glance at its creamy countenance.  "Molyneux's consignment is
making his first acquaintance with Scottish scenery and finding himself,
I hope, amused at the Edinburgh accent.  He'll arrive at Maryfield--poor
wee smout!--at three; if I drive over at twelve, I'll be in time to meet
him.  Tuts, Bell, give over; he's a ten-year-old and a Dyce at
that,--there's not the slightest fear of him."

"Ten years old, and in a foreign country--if you can call Scotland a
foreign country," cried Miss Dyce, still sobbing with anger and grief.
"Oh, the cat-witted scamp, that Molyneux,--if I had him here!"

The dining-room door opened and let in a yawning dog of most plebeian
aspect, longest lie-abed of the household, the clamour of the street, and
the sound of sizzling bacon, followed by Kate's majestic form at a
stately glide, because she had on her new stiff lilac print that was worn
for breakfast only on Sundays and holidays.  "You would think I was never
coming," she said genially, and smiled widely as she put the tray on the
sideboard.  This that I show you, I fear, is a beggarly household,
absurdly free from ceremony.  Mr Dyce looked at his sister Ailie and
smiled; Ailie looked at her sister Bell and smiled.  Bell took a hairpin
or two out of their places and seemed to stab herself with them viciously
in the nape of the neck, and smiled not at all nor said anything, for she
was furious with Molyneux, whom she could see in her mind's eye--an ugly,
tippling, frowsy-looking person with badly polished boots, an impression
that would have greatly amused Mrs Molyneux, who, not without reason,
counted her Jim the handsomest man and the best dressed in the profession
in all Chicago.

"I'm long of coming, like Royal Charlie," Kate proceeded, as she passed
the ashets on to Miss Dyce; "but, oh me! New Year's day here is no' like
New Year's day in the bonny isle of Colonsay."

Mr Dyce said grace and abstractedly helped himself alternately from both
ends of a new roll of powdered butter.  "Dan, dear, don't take the butter
from both ends,--it spoils the look," said Bell.

"Tuts!" said he.  "What's the odds?  There'll be no ends at all when
we're done with it.  I'm utterly regardless of the symmetrical and the
beautiful this morning.  I'm savage to think of that man Molyneux.  If I
was not a man of peace I would be wanting to wring Mr Molyneux's neck,"
and he twisted his morning roll in halves with ferocious hands.

"Dan!" said Ailie, shocked.  "I never heard you say anything so
bloodthirsty in all my life before.  I would never have thought it of
you."

"Maybe not," he said.  "There's many things about me you never suspected.
You women are always under delusions about the men--about the men--well,
dash it! about the men you like.  I know myself so well that there is no
sin, short of one or two not so accounted, that I cannot think myself
capable of.  I believe I might be forced into robbing a kirk if I had no
money and was as hungry as I was this morning before that post-card came
to ruin a remarkably fine New-Year's-day appetite, or even into murdering
a man like Molyneux who failed in the simplest duties no man should
neglect."

"I hope and trust," said Bell, still nervous, "that he is a wiselike boy
with a proper upbringing, who will not be frightened at travelling and
make no mistakes about the train.  If he was a Scotch laddie, with the
fear of God in him, I would not be a bit put about for him, for he would
be sure to be asking, asking, and if he felt frightened he would just
start and eat something, like a Christian.  But this poor child has no
advantages.  Just American!"

Ailie sat back in her chair, with her teacup in her hand, and laughed,
and Kate laughed quietly--though it beat her to see where the fun was;
and the dog laughed likewise--at least it wagged its tail and twisted its
body and made such extraordinary sounds in its throat that you could say
it was laughing.

"Tuts! you are the droll woman, Bell," said Mr Dyce, blinking at her.
"You have the daftest ideas of some things.  For a woman who spent so
long a time in Miss Mushet's seminary and reads so much at the
newspapers, I wonder at you."

"Of course his father was Scotch, that's one mercy," added Bell, not a
bit annoyed at the reception of her pious opinions.

"That is always something to be going on with," said Mr Dyce mockingly.
"I hope he'll make the most of that great start in life and fortune.
It's as good as money in his pocket."

Bell put up a tiny hand and pushed a stray curl (for she had a rebel
chevelure) behind her ear, and smiled in spite of her anxiety about the
coming nephew.  "You may laugh if you like, Dan," she said emphatically,
perking with her head across the table at him; "but I'm _proud_, I'm
PROUD, I'm PROUD I'm Scotch."  ("Not apologising for it myself," said her
brother softly.)  "And you know what these Americans are!  Useless
bodies, who make their men brush their own boots, and have to pay wages
that's a sin to housemaids, and eat pie even-on."

"Dear me! is that true, or did you see it in a newspaper?" said her
brother.  "I begin to be alarmed myself at the possibilities of this
small gentleman now on his way to the north, in the complete confidence
of Mr Molyneux, who must think him very clever.  It's a land of infant
prodigies he comes from; even at the age of ten he may have more of the
stars and stripes in him than we can eradicate by a diet of porridge and
a curriculum of Shorter Catechism and Jane Porter's 'Scottish Chiefs.'
Faith, I was fond of Jane myself when I read her first: she was nice and
bloody.  A big soft hat with a bash in it, perhaps; a rhetorical delivery
at the nose, 'I guess and calculate' every now and then; a habit of
chewing tobacco" ("We'll need a cuspidor," said Ailie _sotto voce_); "and
a revolver in his wee hip-pocket.  Oh, the darling!  I can see him quite
plainly."

"Mercy on us!" cried the maid Kate, and fled the room all in a tremor at
the idea of the revolver.

"You may say what you like, but I cannot get over his being an American,"
said Bell solemnly.  "The dollar's everything in America, and they're so
independent!"

"Terrible! terrible!" said her brother ironically, breaking into another
egg fiercely with his knife, as if he were decapitating the President of
the United States.

Ailie laughed again.  "Dear, dear Bell!" she said, "it sounds quite
Scotch.  A devotion to the dollar is a good sound basis for a Scotch
character.  Remember there are about a hundred bawbees in a dollar: just
think of the dollar in bawbees, and you'll not be surprised that the
Americans prize it so much."

"Renegade!" said Bell, shaking a spoon at her.

"Provincial!" retorted Ailie, shaking a fork at Bell.

"'Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,
Bright the beams that shine on me,'

--children, be quiet," half-sung, half-said their brother.  "Bell, you
are a blether; Ailie, you are a cosmopolitan, a thing accursed.  That's
what Edinburgh and Brussels and your too brisk head have done for you.
Just bring yourself to our poor parochial point of view, and tell me,
both of you, what you propose to do with this young gentleman from
Chicago when you get him."

"Change his stockings and give him a good tea," said Bell promptly, as if
she had been planning it for weeks.  "He'll be starving of hunger and
damp with snow."

"There's something more than dry hose and high tea to the making of a
man," said her brother.  "You can't keep that up for a dozen years."

"Oh, you mean education!" said Bell resignedly.  "That's not in my
department at all."

Ailie expressed her views with calm, soft deliberation, as if she, too,
had been thinking of nothing else for weeks, which was partly the case.
"I suppose," she said, "he'll go to the Grammar School, and get a good
grounding on the classic side, and then to the University.  I will just
love to help him so long as he's at the Grammar School.  That's what I
should have been, Dan, if you had let me--a teacher.  I hope he's a
bright boy, for I simply cannot stand what Bell calls--calls--"

"Diffies," suggested Bell.

"Diffies; yes, I can _not_ stand diffies.  Being half a Dyce I can hardly
think he will be a diffy.  If he's the least like his father, he may be a
little wild at first, but at least he'll be good company, which makes up
for a lot, and good-hearted, quick in perception, fearless, and--"

"And awful funny," suggested Bell, beaming with old, fond, glad
recollections of the brother dead beside his actor wife in far Chicago.

"Fearless, and good fun," continued Ailie.  "Oh, dear Will! what a merry
soul he was.  Well, the child cannot be a fool if he's like his father.
American independence, though he has it in--in--in clods, won't do him
any harm at all.  I love Americans--do you hear that, Bell Dyce?--because
they beat that stupid old King George, and have been brave in the forest
and wise on the prairie, and feared no face of king, and laughed at
dynasties.  I love them because they gave me Emerson, and Whitman, and
Thoreau, and because one of them married my brother William, and was the
mother of his child."

Dan Dyce nodded; he never quizzed his sister Ailie when it was her heart
that spoke and her eyes were sparkling.

"The first thing you should learn him," said Miss Dyce, "is 'God save the
Queen.'  It's a splendid song altogether; I'm glad I'm of a kingdom every
time I hear it at a meeting, for it's all that's left of the olden
notions the Dyces died young or lost their money for.  You'll learn him
that, Ailie, or I'll be very vexed with you.  I'll put flesh on his bones
with my cooking if you put the gentleman in him."

It was Bell's idea that a gentleman talked a very fine English accent
like Ailie, and carried himself stately like Ailie, and had wise and
witty talk for rich or poor like Ailie.

"I'm not so sure about the university," she went on.  "Such stirks come
out of it sometimes; look at poor Maclean, the minister!  They tell me he
could speak Hebrew if he got anybody to speak it back slow to him, but
just imagine the way he puts on his clothes!  And his wife manages him
not so bad in broad Scotch.  I think we could do nothing better than make
the boy a lawyer; it's a trade looked up to, and there's money in it,
though I never could see the need of law myself if folk would only be
agreeable.  He could go into Dan's office whenever he is old enough."

"A lawyer!" cried her brother.  "You have first of all to see that he's
not an ass."

"And what odds would that make to a lawyer?" said Bell quickly, snapping
her eyes at the brother she honestly thought the wisest man in Scotland.

"Bell," said he, "as I said before, you're a haivering body--nothing
else, though I'll grant you bake no' a bad scone.  And as for you, Ailie,
you're beginning, like most women, at the wrong end.  The first thing to
do with your nephew is to teach him to be happy, for it's a habit that
has to be acquired early, like the liking for pease-brose."

"You began gey early yourself," said Bell.  "Mother used to say that she
was aye kittling your feet till you laughed when you were a baby.  I
sometimes think that she did not stop it soon enough."

"If I had to educate myself again, and had not a living to make, I would
leave out a good many things the old dominie thought needful.  What was
yon awful thing again?--mensuration.  To sleep well and eat anything,
fear the face of nobody in bashfulness, to like dancing, and be able to
sing a good bass or tenor,--that's no bad beginning in the art of life.
There's a fellow Brodie yonder in the kirk choir who seems to me happier
than a king when he's getting in a fine boom-boom of bass to the tune
Devizes; he puts me all out at my devotions on a Lord's day with envy of
his accomplishment."

"What! envy too!" said Alison.  "Murder, theft, and envy--what a
brother!"

"Yes, envy too, the commonest and ugliest of our sins," said Mr Dyce.  "I
never met man or woman who lacked it, though many never know they have
it.  I hope the great thing is to be ashamed to feel it, for that's all
that I can boast of myself.  When I was a boy at the school there was
another boy, a great friend of my own, was chosen to compete for a prize
I was thought incapable of taking, so that I was not on the list.  I
envied him to hatred--almost; and saying my bits of prayers at night I
prayed that he might win.  I felt ashamed of my envy, and set the better
Daniel Dyce to wrestle with the Daniel Dyce who was not quite so big.  It
was a sair fight, I can assure you.  I found the words of my prayer and
my wishes considerably at variance--"

"Like me and 'Thy will be done' when we got the word of brother William,"
said Bell.

"But my friend--dash him!--got the prize.  I suppose God took a kind of
vizzy down that night and saw the better Dan Dyce was doing his desperate
best against the other devil's-Dan, who mumbled the prayer on the chance
He would never notice.  There was no other way of accounting for it, for
that confounded boy got the prize, and he was not half so clever as
myself, and that was Alick Maitland.  Say nothing about envy, Ailie; I
fear we all have some of it until we are perhaps well up in years, and
understand that between the things we envy and the luck we have there is
not much to choose.  If I got all I wanted, myself, the world would have
to be much enlarged.  It does not matter a docken leaf.  Well, as I was
saying when my learned friend interrupted me, I would have this young
fellow healthy and happy and interested in everything.  There are men I
see who would mope and weary in the middle of a country fair--God help
them!  I want to stick pins in them sometimes and make them jump.  They
take as little interest in life as if they were undertakers."

"Hoots! nobody could weary in this place at any rate," said Bell briskly.
"Look at the life and gaiety that's in it.  Talk about London!  I can
hardly get my sleep at night quite often with the traffic.  And such
things are always happening in it--births and marriages, engagements and
tea-parties, new patterns at Miss Minto's, two coaches in the day, and
sometimes somebody doing something silly that will keep you laughing half
the week."

"But it's not quite so lively as Chicago," said Mr Dyce.  "There has not
been a man shot in this neighbourhood since the tinker kind of killed his
wife (as the fiscal says) with the pistol.  You'll have heard of him?
When the man was being brought on the scaffold for it, and the minister
asked if he had anything to say before he suffered the extreme penalty of
the law, 'All I have got to say,' he answered, starting to greet, 'is
that this'll be an awful lesson to me.'"

"That's one of your old ones," said Bell; but even an old one was welcome
in Dyce's house on New Year's day, and the three of them laughed at the
story as if it had newly come from London in Ailie's precious 'Punch.'
The dog fell into a convulsion of merriment, as if inward chuckles
tormented him--as queer a dog as ever was, neither Scotch terrier nor
Skye, Dandy Dinmont nor Dachshund, but just dog,--dark wire-haired
behind, short ruddy-haired in front, a stump tail, a face so fringed you
could only see its eyes when the wind blew.  Mr Dyce put down his hand
and scratched it behind the ear.  "Don't laugh, Footles," he said.  "I
would not laugh if I were you, Footles,--it's just an old one.  Many a
time you've heard it before, sly rogue.  One would think you wanted to
borrow money."  If you could hear Dan Dyce speak to his dog, you would
know at once he was a bachelor: only bachelors and bairnless men know
dogs.

"I hope and trust he'll have decent clothes to wear, and none of their
American rubbish," broke in Bell, back to her nephew again.  "It's all
nonsense about the bashed hat; but you can never tell what way an
American play-actor will dress a bairn: there's sure to be something
daft-like about him--a starry waistcoat or a pair of spats,--and we must
make him respectable like other boys in the place."

"I would say Norfolk suits, the same as the banker's boys," suggested
Ailie.  "I think the banker's boys always look so smart and neat."

"Anything with plenty of pockets in it," said Mr Dyce.  "At the age of
ten a boy would prefer his clothes to be all pockets.  By George! an
entire suit of pockets, with a new penny in every pocket for luck, would
be a great treat,"--and he chuckled at the idea, making a mental note of
it for a future occasion.

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Bell emphatically, for here she was in her
own department.  "The boy is going to be a Scotch boy.  I'll have the
kilt on him, or nothing."

"The kilt!" said Mr Dyce.

"The kilt!" cried Ailie.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

It was a loud knocking at the front door.  They stopped the talk to
listen, and they heard the maid go along the lobby from the kitchen.
When she opened the door, there came in the cheerful discord of the
street, the sound of a pounding drum, the fifes still busy, the
orange-hawker's cry, but over all they heard her put her usual
interrogation to visitors, no matter what their state or elegance.

"Well, what is't?" she asked, and though they could not see her, they
knew she would have the door just a trifle open, with her shoulder
against it, as if she was there to repel some chieftain of a wild
invading clan.  Then they heard her cry, "Mercy on me!" and her footsteps
hurrying to the parlour door.  She threw it open, and stood with some one
behind her.

"What do you think?  Here's brother William's wean!" she exclaimed in a
gasp.

"My God!  Where is he?" cried Bell, the first to find her tongue.  "He's
no hurt, is he?"

"_It's no' a him at all--it's a her_!" shrieked Kate, throwing up her
arms in consternation, and stepping aside she gave admission to a little
girl.




CHAPTER IV.


THE orphan child of William and Mary Dyce, dead, the pair of them, in the
far-off city of Chicago, stepped quite serenely into an astounded
company.  There were three Dyces in a row in front of her, and the droll
dog Footles at her feet, and behind her, Kate, the servant, wringing her
apron as if it had newly come from the washing-boyne, her bosom heaving.
Ten eyes (if you could count the dog's, hidden by his tousy fringe)
stared at the child a moment, and any ordinary child would have been much
put out; but this was no common child, or else she felt at once the fond
kind air of home.  I will give you her picture in a sentence or two.  She
was black-haired, dark and quick in the eye, not quite pale but olive in
complexion, with a chin she held well up, and a countenance neither shy
nor bold, but self-possessed.  Fur on her neck and hood (Jim Molyneux's
last gift), and a muff that held her arms up to the elbows, gave her an
aspect of picture-book cosiness that put the maid in mind at once of the
butcher's Christmas calendar.

It was the dog that first got over the astonishment: he made a dive at
her with little friendly growls, and rolled on his back at her feet, to
paddle with his four paws in the air, which was his way of showing he was
in the key for fun.

With a cry of glee she threw the muff on the floor and plumped beside
him, put her arms about his body and buried her face in his fringe.  His
tail went waving, joyous, like a banner.  "Doggie, doggie, you love me,"
said she in an accent that was anything but American.  "Let us pause and
consider,--you will not leave this house till I boil you an egg."

"God bless me, what child's this?" cried Bell, coming to herself with a
start, and, pouncing on her, she lifted her to her feet.  Ailie sank on
her hands and knees and stared in the visitor's face.  "The kilt,
indeed!" said Mr Dyce to himself.  "This must be a warlock wean, for if
it has not got the voice and sentiment of Wanton Wully Oliver I'm losing
my wits."

"Tell me this, quick, are you Lennox Dyce?" said Bell all trembling,
devouring the little one with her eyes.

"Well, I just guess I am," replied the child calmly, with the dog licking
her chin.  "Say, are you Auntie Bell?" and this time there was no doubt
about the American accent.  Up went her mouth to them to be kissed,
composedly: they lost no time, but fell upon her, Ailie half in tears
because at once she saw below the childish hood so much of brother
William.

"Lennox, dear, you should not speak like that; who in all the world
taught you to speak like that?" said Bell, unwrapping her.

"Why, I thought that was all right here," said the stranger.  "That's the
way the bell-man speaks."

"Bless me!  Do you know the bell-man?" cried Miss Dyce.

"I rang his old bell for him this morning--didn't you hear me?" was the
surprising answer.  "He's a nice man; he liked me.  I'd like him too if
he wasn't so tired.  He was too tired to speak sense; all he would say
was, 'I've lost the place; let us pause and consider,' and 'Try another
egg.'  I said I would give him a quarter if he'd let me ring his bell,
and he said he'd let me do it for nothing, and my breakfast besides.
'You'll not leave this house till I boil an egg for you'--that's what he
said, and the poor man was so tired and his legs were dreff'le poorly!"
Again her voice was the voice of Wully Oliver; the sentiment, as the
Dyces knew, was the slogan of his convivial hospitality.

"The kilt, indeed!" said Mr Dyce, feeling extraordinarily foolish, and,
walking past them, he went upstairs and hurriedly put the pea-sling in
his pocket.

When he came down, Young America was indifferently pecking at her second
breakfast with Footles on her knee, an aunt on either side of her, and
the maid Kate with a tray in her hand for excuse, open-mouthed, half in
at the door.

"Well, as I was saying, Jim--that's my dear Mr Molyneux, you know--got
busy with a lot of the boys once he landed off that old ship, and so he
said, 'Bud, this is the--the--justly cel'brated Great Britain; I know by
the boys; they're so lonely when they're by themselves; I was 'prehensive
we might have missed it in the dark, but it's all right.'  And next day
he bought me this muff and things and put me on the cars--say, what funny
cars you have!--and said 'Good-bye, Bud; just go right up to Maryfield,
and change there.  If you're lost anywhere on the island just holler out
good and loud, and I'll hear!'  He pretended he wasn't caring, but he was
pretty blinky 'bout the eyes, and I saw he wasn't anyway gay, so I never
let on the way I felt myself."

She suggested the tone and manner of the absent Molyneux in a fashion to
put him in the flesh before them.  Kate almost laughed loud out at the
oddity of it; Ailie and her brother were astounded at the cleverness of
the mimicry; Bell clenched her hands, and said for the second time that
day, "Oh! that Molyneux, if I had him!"

"He's a nice man, Jim.  I can't tell you how I love him--and he gave me
heaps of candy at the depot," proceeded the unabashed new-comer.
"'Change at Edinburgh,' he said; 'you'll maybe have time to run into the
Castle and see the Duke; give him my love, but not my address.  When you
get to Maryfield hop out slick and ask for your uncle Dyce.'  And then he
said, did Jim, 'I hope he ain't a loaded Dyce, seein' he's Scotch, and
it's the festive season.'"

"The adorable Jim!" said Ailie.  "We might have known."

"I got on all right," proceeded the child, "but I didn't see the Duke of
Edinburgh; there wasn't time, and uncle wasn't at Maryfield, but a man
put me on his mail carriage and drove me right here.  He said I was a
caution.  My! it was cold.  Say, is it always weather like this here?"

"Sometimes it's like this, and sometimes it's just ordinary Scotch
weather," said Mr Dyce, twinkling at her through his spectacles.

"I was dreff'le sleepy in the mail, and the driver wrapped me up, and
when I came into this town in the dark he said, 'Walk right down there
and rap at the first door you see with a brass man's hand for a knocker;
that's Mr Dyce's house.'  I came down, and there wasn't any brass man,
but I saw the knocker.  I couldn't reach up to it, so when I saw a man
going into the church with a lantern in his hand, I went up to him and
pulled his coat.  I knew he'd be all right going into a church.  He told
me he was going to ring the bell, and I said I'd give him a quarter--oh,
I said that before.  When the bell was finished he took me to his house
for luck--that was what he said--and he and his wife got right up and
boiled eggs.  They said I was a caution, too, and they went on boiling
eggs, and I couldn't eat more than two and a white though I tried _and_
tried.  I think I slept a good while in their house; I was so fatigued,
and they were all right; they loved me, I could see that.  And I liked
them some myself, though they must be mighty poor, for they haven't any
children.  Then the bell-man took me to this house, and rapped at the
door, and went away pretty quick for him before anybody came to it,
because he said he was plain-soled--what's plain-soled anyhow?--and
wasn't a lucky first-foot on a New Year's morning."

"It beats all, that's what it does!" cried Bell.  "My poor wee
whitterick!  Were ye no' frightened on the sea?"

"Whitterick, whitterick," repeated the child to herself, and Ailie,
noticing, was glad that this was certainly not a diffy.  Diffies never
interest themselves in new words; diffies never go inside themselves with
a new fact as a dog goes under a table with a bone.

"Were you not frightened when you were on the sea?" repeated Bell.

"No," said the child promptly.  "Jim was there all right, you see, and he
knew all about it.  He said, 'Trust in Providence, and if it's _very_
stormy, trust in Providence and the Scotch captain.'"

"I declare! the creature must have some kind of sense in him, too," said
Bell, a little mollified by this compliment to Scotch sea-captains.  And
all the Dyces fed their eyes upon this wonderful wean that had fallen
among them.  'Twas happy in that hour with them; as if in a miracle they
had been remitted to their own young years; their dwelling was at long
last furnished!  She had got into the good graces of Footles as if she
had known him all her life.

"Say, uncle, this is a funny dog," was her next remark.  "Did God make
him?"

"Well--yes, I suppose God did," said Mr Dyce, taken a bit aback.

"Well, isn't He the darndest!  This dog beats Mrs Molyneux's Dodo, and
Dodo was a looloo.  What sort of a dog is he?  Scotch terrier?"

"Mostly not," said her uncle, chuckling.  "It's really an improvement on
the Scotch terrier.  There's later patents in him, you might say.  He's a
sort of mosaic; indeed, when I think of it you might describe him as a
pure mosaic dog."

"A Mosaic dog!" exclaimed Lennox.  "Then he must have come from
scriptural parts.  Perhaps I'll get playing with him Sundays.  Not
playing loud out, you know, but just being happy.  I love being happy,
don't you?"

"It's my only weakness," said Mr Dyce emphatically, blinking through his
glasses.  "The other business men in the town don't approve of me for it;
they call it frivolity.  But it comes so easily to me I never charge it
in the bills, though a sense of humour should certainly be worth 12s. 6d.
a smile in the Table of Fees.  It would save many a costly plea."

"Didn't you play on Sunday in Chicago?" asked Ailie.

"Not out loud.  Poppa said he was bound to have me Scotch in one thing at
least, even if it took a strap.  That was after mother died.  He'd just
read to me Sundays, and we went to church till we had pins and needles.
We had the Reverend Ebenezer Paul Frazer, M.A., Presbyterian Church on
the Front.  He just preached and preached till we had pins and needles
all over."

"My poor Lennox!" exclaimed Ailie, with feeling.

"Oh, I'm all right!" said young America blithely.  "I'm not kicking."

Dan Dyce, with his head to the side, took off his spectacles and rubbed
them clean with his handkerchief; put them on again, looked at his niece
through them, and then at Ailie, with some emotion struggling in his
countenance.  Ailie for a moment suppressed some inward convulsion, and
turned her gaze, embarrassed from him to Bell, and Bell catching the eyes
of both of them could contain her joy no longer.  They laughed till the
tears came, and none more heartily than brother William's child.  She had
so sweet a laugh that there and then the Dyces thought it the loveliest
sound they had ever heard in their house.  Her aunts would have devoured
her with caresses.  Her uncle stood over her and beamed, rubbing his
hands, expectant every moment of another manifestation of the oddest kind
of child mind he had ever encountered.  And Kate swept out and in between
the parlour and the kitchen on trivial excuses, generally with something
to eat for the child, who had eaten so much in the house of Wanton Wully
Oliver that she was indifferent to the rarest delicacies of Bell's
celestial grocery.

"You're just--just a wee witch!" said Bell, fondling the child's hair.
"Do you know, that man Molyneux--"

"Jim," suggested Lennox.

"I would Jim him if I had him!  That man Molyneux in all his scrimping
little letters never said whether you were a boy or a girl, and we
thought a Lennox was bound to be a boy, and all this time we have been
expecting a boy."

"I declare!" said the little one, with the most amusing drawl, a memory
of Molyneux.  "Why, I always was a girl, far back as I can remember.
Nobody never gave me the chance to be a boy.  I s'pose I hadn't the
clothes for the part, and they just pushed me along anyhow in frocks.
Would you'd rather I was a boy?"

"Not a bit!  We have one in the house already, and he's a fair
heart-break," said her aunt, with a look towards Mr Dyce.  "We had just
made up our minds to dress you in the kilt when your rap came to the
door.  At least, I had made up my mind; the others are so thrawn!  And
bless me! lassie, where's your luggage?  You surely did not come all the
way from Chicago with no more than what you have on your back?"

"You'll be tickled to death to see my trunks!" said Lennox.  "I've heaps
and heaps of clothes and six dolls.  They're all coming with the coach.
They wanted me to wait for the coach too, but the mail man who called me
a caution said he was bound to have a passenger for luck on New Year's
day, and I was in a hurry to get home anyway."

"Home!"  When she said that, the two aunts swept on her like a billow and
bore her, dog and all, upstairs to her room.  She was almost blind for
want of sleep.  They hovered over her quick-fingered, airy as bees,
stripping her for bed.  She knelt a moment and in one breath said--

"God--bless--father--and--mother--and--Jim--and--Mrs
Molyneux--and--my--aunts--in--Scotland--and--Uncle--Dan--and--everybody--
good-night"

And was asleep in the sunlight of the room as soon as her head fell on
the pillow.

"She prayed for her father and mother," whispered Bell, with Footles in
her arms, as they stood beside the bed.  "It's not--it's not quite
Presbyterian to pray for the dead; it's very American, indeed you might
call it papist."

Ailie's face reddened, but she said nothing.

"And do you know this?" said Bell shamefacedly, "I do it myself; upon my
word, I do it myself.  I'm often praying for father and mother and
William."

"So am I," confessed Alison, plainly relieved.  "I'm afraid I'm a poor
Presbyterian, for I never knew there was anything wrong in doing so."

Below, in the parlour, Mr Dyce stood looking into the white garden, a
contented man, humming--

                   "Star of Peace, to wanderers weary."




CHAPTER V.


SHE was a lucky lassie, this of ours, to have come home to her father's
Scotland on that New Year's day, for there is no denying that it is not
always gay in Scotland, contrairy land, that, whether we be deep down in
the waist of the world and afar from her, or lying on her breast, chains
us to her with links of iron and gold,--stern tasks and happy days
remembered, ancient stories, austerity and freedom, cold weather on moor
and glen, warm hearths and burning hearts.  She might have seen this
burgh first in its solemnity, on one of the winter days when it shivers
and weeps among its old memorials, and the wild geese cry more constant
over the house-tops, and the sodden gardens, lanes, wynds, and wells, the
clanging spirits of old citizens dead and gone, haunting the place of
their follies and their good times, their ridiculous ideals, their
mistaken ambitions, their broken plans.  Ah, wild geese! wild geese! old
ghosts that cry to-night above my dwelling, I feel--I feel and know!  She
might have come, the child, to days of fast, and sombre dark drugget
garments, dissonant harsh competing kettle bells, or spoiled harvests,
poor fishings, hungry hours.  It was good for her, and it is the making
of my story, that she came not then, but with the pure white cheerful
snow, to ring the burgh bell in her childish escapade, and usher in with
merriment the New Year, and begin her new life happily in the old world.

She woke at noon among the scented curtains, in linen sea-breeze
bleached, under the camceil roof that all children love, for it makes a
garret like the ancestral cave, and in rainy weather they can hear the
pattering feet of foes above them.  She heard the sound of John Taggart's
drum, and the fifing of "Happy we've been a' thegether," and turning,
found upon her pillow a sleeping doll that woke whenever she raised it
up, and stared at her in wonderment.

"Oh!--Oh!--Oh! you roly-poley blonde!" cried the child in ecstasy,
hugging it to her bosom and covering it with kisses.  "I'm as glad as
anything.  Do you see the lovely little room?  I'll tell you right here
what your name is: it's Alison; no, it's Bell; no, it's Alibel for your
two just lovely, lovely aunties."

Up she rose, sleep banished, with a sense of cheerfulness and
expectation, nimbly dressed herself, and slid down the banisters to
tumble plump at the feet of her Auntie Bell in the lobby.

"Mercy on us!  You'll break your neck; are you hurt?" cried Aunt Bell.
"I'm not kicking," said the child, and the dog waved furiously a gladsome
tail.  A log fire blazed and crackled and hissed in the parlour, and Mr
Dyce tapped time with his fingers on a chair-back to an internal hymn.

"My! ain't I the naughty girl to be snoozling away like a gopher in a
hole all day?  Your clock's stopped, Uncle Dan."

Mr Dyce looked very guilty, and coughed, rubbing his chin.  "You're a
noticing creature," said he.  "I declare it _has_ stopped.  Well, well!"
and his sister Bell plainly enjoyed some amusing secret.

"Your uncle is always a little daft, my dear," she said.

"I would rather be daft than dismal," he retorted, cleaning his glasses.

"It's a singular thing that the clocks in our lobby and parlour always
stop on the New Year's day, Lennox."

"Bud; please, say Bud," pleaded the little one.  "Nobody ever calls me
Lennox 'cept when I'm doing something wrong and almost going to get a
whipping."

"Very well, Bud, then.  This clock gets something wrong with it every New
Year's day, for your uncle, that man there, wants the folk who call never
to know the time so that they'll bide the longer."

"Tuts!" said Uncle Dan, who had thought this was his own particular
recipe for joviality, and that they had never discovered it.

"You have come to a hospitable town, Bud," said Ailie.  "There are
convivial old gentlemen on the other side of the street who have got up a
petition to the magistrates to shut up the inn and the public-house in
the afternoon.  They say it is in the interests of temperance, but it's
really to compel their convivial friends to visit themselves."

"I signed it myself," confessed Mr Dyce, "and I'm only half convivial.
I'm not bragging; I might have been more convivial if it didn't so easily
give me a sore head.  What's more cheerful than a crowd in the house and
the clash going?  A fine fire, a good light, and turn about at a story!
The happiest time I ever had in my life was when I broke my leg; so many
folk called, it was like a month of New Year's days.  I was born with a
craving for company.  Mother used to have a superstition that if a knife
or spoon dropped on the floor from the table it betokened a visitor, and
I used to drop them by the dozen.  But, dear me! here's a wean with a
doll, and where in the world did she get it?"

Bud, with the doll under one arm and the dog tucked under the other,
laughed up in his face with shy perception.

"Oh, you funny man!" she exclaimed.  "I guess you know all right who put
Alibel on my pillow.  Why! I could have told you were a doll man: I
noticed you turning over the pennies in your pants' pocket, same as poppa
used when he saw any nice clean little girl like me, and he was the
dolliest man in all Chicago.  Why, there was treasury days when he just
rained dolls."

"That was William, sure enough," said Mr Dyce.  "There's no need for
showing us your strawberry mark.  It was certainly William.  If it had
only been dolls!"

"Her name's Alibel, for her two aunties," said the child.

"Tuts!" said Mr Dyce.  "If I had thought you meant to honour them that
way I would have made her twins.  But you see I did not know; it was a
delicate transaction as it was.  I could not tell very well whether a
doll or a--a--or a fountain pen would be the most appropriate present for
a ten-year-old niece from Chicago, and I risked the doll.  I hope it
fits."

"Like a halo.  It's just sweet!" said the ecstatic maiden, and rescued
one of its limbs from the gorge of Footles.

It got about the town that to Dyces' house had come a wonderful American
child who talked language like a minister: the news was partly the news
of the mail-driver and Wully Oliver, but mostly the news of Kate, who,
from the moment Lennox had been taken from her presence and put to bed,
had dwelt upon the window-sashes, letting no one pass that side of the
street without her confidence.

"You never heard the like!  No' the size of a shillin's worth of
ha'pennies, and she came all the way by her lee-lone in the coach from
Chickagoo,--that's in America.  There's to be throng times in this house
now, I'm tellin' you, with brother William's wean."

As the forenoon advanced Kate's intelligence grew more surprising: to the
new-comer were ascribed a score of characteristics such as had never been
seen in the town before.  For one thing (would Kate assure them), she
could imitate Wully Oliver till you almost saw whiskers on her and could
smell the dram.  She was thought to be a boy to start with, but that was
only their ignorance in Chickagoo, for the girl was really a lassie, and
had kists of lassie's clothes coming with the coach.

The Dyces' foreigner was such a grand sensation that it marred the
splendour of the afternoon band parade, though John Taggart was unusually
glorious, walking on the very backs of his heels, his nose in the
heavens, and his drumsticks soaring and circling over his head in a way
to make the spectators giddy.  Instead of following the band till its
_repertoire_ was suddenly done at five minutes to twelve at the door of
Maggie White, the wine and spirit merchant, there were many that hung
about the street in the hope of seeing the American.  They thought they
would know her at once by the colour of her skin, which some said would
be yellow, and others maintained would be brown.  A few less patient and
more privileged boldly visited the house of Dyce to make their New Year
compliments and see the wonder for themselves.

The American had her eye on them.

She had her eye on the Sheriff's lady, who was so determinedly affable,
so pleased with everything the family of Dyce might say, do, or possess,
and only five times ventured to indicate there were others, by a mention
of "the dear Lady Anne--so nice, so simple, so unaffected, so amiable."

On Miss Minto of the crimson cloak, who kept her deaf ear to the sisters
and her good one to their brother, and laughed heartily at all his little
jokes even before they were half made, or looked at him with large, soft,
melting eyes and her lips apart, which her glass had told her was an
aspect ravishing.  The sisters smiled at each other when she had gone and
looked comically at Dan, but he, poor man, saw nothing but just that Mary
Minto was a good deal fatter than she used to be.

On the doctor's two sisters, late come from a farm in the country,
marvellously at ease so long as the conversation abode in gossip about
the neighbours, but in a silent terror when it rose from persons to
ideas, as it once had done when Lady Anne had asked them what they
thought of didactic poetry, and one of them said it was a thing she was
very fond of, and then fell in a swound.

On the banker man, the teller, who was in hopeless love with Ailie, as
was plain from the way he devoted himself to Bell.

On Mr Dyce's old retired partner, Mr Cleland, who smelt of cloves and did
not care for tea.

On P. & A. MacGlashan, who had come in specially to see if the stranger
knew his brother Albert, who, he said, was "in a Somewhere-ville in
Manitoba."

On the Provost and his lady, who were very old, and petted each other
when they thought themselves unobserved.

On the soft, kind, simple, content and happy ladies lately married.

On the others who would like to be.

Yes, Bud had her eye on them all.  They never guessed how much they
entertained her as they genteelly sipped their tea, or wine, or ginger
cordial,--the women of them,--or coughed a little too artificially over
the New Year glass,--the men.

"Wee Pawkie, that's what she is--just Wee Pawkie!" said the Provost when
he got out, and so far it summed up everything.

The ladies could not tear away home fast enough to see if they had not a
remnant of cloth that could be made into such a lovely dress as that of
Dyce's niece for one of their own children.  "Mark my words!" they said
--"that child will be ruined between them.  She's her father's image, and
he went and married a poor play-actress, and stayed a dozen years away
from Scotland, and never wrote home a line."

So many people came to the house, plainly for no reason but to see the
new-comer, that Ailie at last made up her mind to satisfy all by taking
her out for a walk.  The strange thing was that in the street the
populace displayed indifference or blindness.  Bud might have seen no
more sign of interest in her than the hurried glance of a passer-by; no
step slowed to show that the most was being made of the opportunity.
There had been some women at their windows when she came out of the house
sturdily walking by Aunt Ailie's side, with her hands in her muff, and
her keen black eyes peeping from under the fur of her hood; but these
women drew in their heads immediately.  Ailie, who knew her native town,
was conscious that from behind the curtains the scrutiny was keen.  She
smiled to herself as she walked demurely down the street.

"Do you feel anything, Bud?" she asked.

Bud naturally failed to comprehend.

"You ought to feel something at your back; I'm ticklish all down the back
because of a hundred eyes."

"I know," said the astounding child.  "They think we don't notice, but I
guess God sees them," and yet she had apparently never glanced at the
windows herself, nor looked round to discover passers-by staring over
their shoulders at her aunt and her.

For a moment Ailie felt afraid.  She dearly loved a quick perception, but
it was a gift, she felt, a niece might have too young.

"How in the world did you know that, Bud?" she asked.

"I just guessed they'd be doing it," said Bud, "'cause it's what I would
do if I saw a little girl from Scotland walking down the lake front in
Chicago.  Is it dre'ffle rude, Aunt Ailie?"

"So they say, so they say," said her aunt, looking straight forward, with
her shoulders back and her eyes level, flushing at the temples.  "But I'm
afraid we can't help it.  It's undignified--to be seen doing it.  I can
see you're a real Dyce, Bud.  The other people who are not Dyces lose a
great deal of fun.  Do you know, child, I think you and I are going to be
great friends--you and I and Aunt Bell and Uncle Dan."

"And the Mosaic dog," added Bud with warmth.  "I love that old dog so
much that I could--I could eat him.  He's the becomingest dog!  Why, here
he is!"  And it was indeed Footles who hurled himself at them, a
rapturous mass of unkempt hair and convulsive barkings, having escaped
from the imprisonment of Kate's kitchen by climbing over her shoulders
and out across the window-sash.




CHAPTER VI.


"I HEARD all about you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan from pop--from
father," said Bud, as they walked back to the house.  She had learned
already from example how sweeter sounded "father" than the term she had
used in America.  "He was mighty apt to sit up nights talking about you
all.  But I don't quite place Kate: he never mentioned Kate."

"Oh, she's a new addition," explained Ailie.  "Kate is the maid, you
know: she came to us long after your father left home, but she's been
with us five years now, and that's long enough to make her one of the
family."

"My!  Five years!  She ain't--she isn't much of a quitter, is she?  I
guess you must have tacked her down," said Bud.  "You don't get helps in
Chicago to linger round the dear old spot like that; they get all hot
running from base to base, same as if it was a game of ball.  But she's a
pretty--pretty broad girl, isn't she?  She couldn't run very fast;
that'll be the way she stays."

Ailie smiled.  "Ah!  So that's Chicago, too, is it?  You must have been
in the parlour a good many times at five-o'clock tea to have grasped the
situation at your age.  I suppose your Chicago ladies lower the
temperature of their tea weeping into it the woes they have about their
domestics?  It's another Anglo-Saxon link."

"Mrs Jim said sensible girls that would stay long enough to cool down
after the last dash were getting that scarce you had to go out after them
with a gun.  You didn't really, you know; that was just Mrs Jim's way of
putting it."

"I understand," said Alison, unable to hide her amusement.  "You seem to
have picked up that way of putting it yourself."

"Am I speaking slang?" asked the child, glancing up quickly and
reddening.  "Father pro--prosisted I wasn't to speak slang nor chew gum;
he said it was things no real lady would do in the old country, and that
I was to be a well-off English undefied.  You must be dre'ffle shocked,
Auntie Ailie?"

"Oh no," said Ailie cheerfully; "I never was shocked in all my life,
though they say I'm a shocker myself.  I'm only surprised a little at the
possibilities of the English language.  I've hardly heard you use a word
of slang yet, and still you scarcely speak a sentence in which there's
not some novelty.  It's like Kate's first attempt at sheep's-head broth:
we were familiar with all the ingredients except the horns, and we knew
them elsewhere."

"That's all right, then," said Bud, relieved.  "But Mrs Jim had funny
ways of putting things, and I s'pose I picked them up.  I can't help
it--I pick up so fast.  Why, I had scarletina twice! and I picked up her
way of zaggerating: often I zaggerate dre'ffle, and say I wrote all the
works of Shakespeare, when I really didn't, you know.  Mrs Jim didn't
mean that she had to go out hunting for helps with a gun; all she meant
was that they were getting harder and harder to get, and mighty hard to
keep when you got them."







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