Kitabı oku: «The Daft Days», sayfa 10
“A truly Christian woman!” said Miss Bell.
“I’m not denying it,” said Mr Dyce; “but even a Christian woman should think sometimes of the claims of her creditors, and between ourselves it takes me all my time to keep the wholesale merchants from hauling her to court.”
“How do you manage it?” asked Ailie, with a twinkle in her eyes; but Dan made no reply, – he coughed and cleaned his spectacles.
CHAPTER XVII
There was joy a few days later in the Dyce’s kitchen when Peter the postman, with a snort that showed the bitterness of his feelings, passed through the window a parcel for Kate, that on the face of it had come from foreign parts. “I don’t ken who it’s from, and ye’re no’ to think I’m askin’,” said he; “but the stamps alone for that thing must have cost a bonny penny.”
“Did they, indeed!” said Kate, with a toss of her head. “Ye’ll be glad to ken he can well afford it!” and she sniffed at the parcel, redolent of perfumes strange and strong.
“Ye needna snap the nose off me,” said the postman, “I only made the remark. What – what does the fellow do?”
“He’s a traveller for railway tunnels,” retorted the maid of Colonsay, and shut the window with a bang, to tear open the parcel in a frenzy of expectation, and find a bottle of Genuine Riga Balsam – wonderful cure for sailors’ wounds! – another of Florida Water, and a silver locket, with a note from Charles saying the poem she had sent was truly grand, and wishing her many happy returns of the day. Like many of Charles’s letters now, its meaning was, in parts, beyond her, until she could learn from Bud the nature of the one to which it was an answer, – for Bud was so far enraptured with the wandering sailor that she sometimes sent him letters which the servant never saw. That day the breakfast service smelt of Florida Water, for Kate had drenched herself with the perfume, and Miss Bell was sure she had washed the dishes again with scented soap, as was the habit of the girl when first she came from Colonsay, and thought that nothing but Brown Windsor would do justice to Grandma Buntain’s tea-set used on Sundays. But Bud could see the signs of Shipping Intelligence, and, as soon as she could, she hastened to the kitchen, for it was Saturday, and on Saturdays there were no lessons in the Dyce Academy. Oh! how she and Kate fondled the bottles lovingly, and sniffed passionately at their contents, and took turn about of the locket! The maid had but one regret, that she had no immediate use for Riga Balsam; but Bud was more devoted than that – she gently pricked the palm of her hand with a pin and applied the Genuine. “Oh! how he must love me – us, I mean,” she exclaimed, and eagerly devoured his letter.
“What did you say to him in the last?” asked Kate. “He’s talking there about a poetry, and happy returns of the day.”
Bud confessed she had made a poem for him from his beloved Kate, and had reckoned on fetching a gift of candy by telling him her birthday was on Monday. “But really I’d just as lief have the balsam,” said she, “it’s perfectly lovely; how it nips!”
“It’s not my birthday at all,” said Kate. “My birthday’s always on the second Sunday in September. I was born about the same time as Lady Anne – either a fortnight before or a fortnight after; I forget mysel’ completely which it was, and I daresay so does she.”
“No, but Monday’s my birthday, right enough,” said Bud, “and seeing that we’re sort of loving him in company, I s’posed it would be all the same.”
“So it is, I’m not complainin’,” said the maid. “And now we’ll have to send him something back. What would you recommend?”
They considered many gifts appropriate for a sailor, – sou’-westers, Bible-markers, woollen comforters, and paper-knives, scarf-pins, gloves, and ties. Bud was sure that nothing would delight him like a book about a desert island, but Kate said no, a pipe was just the very ticket – a wooden pipe with silver mountings; the very one to suit was in the window of Mrs Wright’s Italian warehouse.
“What’s an Italian warehouse?” asked the child.
“You have me there!” said Kate, “unless, maybe, her husband was Italian before he went and died on her. ‘Italian Warehouse’ is the only thing that’s on her sign. She sells a thing for almost any price you like to offer, because the Bible says it’s not the thing at all to argy-bargy.”
“I know,” said Bud; “it’s what we call running a business on – on – on philanthropic principles. I’d love to see a body do it. I’ll run out and buy the pipe from Mrs Wright, Kate.”
She departed on her errand down the town, at the other side of the church; and the hours of the forenoon passed, and dinner-time was almost come, and still there was no sign of her returning. Kate would have lost her patience and gone to seek for her, but found so much to interest at the window that she quite forgot her messenger. Something out of the ordinary was happening on the other side of the church. Wanton Wully knew what it was, but of course he was not telling, for he was out as public crier, rousing the town with his hand-bell, and shouting “Notice!” with an air that promised some tremendous tidings; but beyond mysterious words like “bed-rock prices,” which he mumbled from a paper in his hand, there was nothing to show this proclamation differed from the common ones regarding herring at the quay or a sale of delf down-by at John Turner’s corner. “What are ye crying?” they asked him, but being a man with the belief that he had a voice as clear as a concert-singer, he would not condescend to tell them. Only when some one looked across his shoulder and read the paper for himself was it found that a sale described as “Revolutionary” was taking place at the Italian warehouse. Half the town at once went to see what the decent body was up to. Kate saw them hurrying down, and when they came back they were laughing. “What’s the ploy?” she asked a passer-by.
“A sale at the Pilgrim weedow’s,” she was told. “She’s put past her Spurgeon’s Sermons and got a book about business, and she’s learnin’ the way to keep an Italian warehoose in Scotch.”
Kate would have been down the town at once to see this marvel for herself, but her pot was on the boil, and here was the mistress coming down the stair, crying “Lennox, Lennox!” The maid’s heart sank. She had forgotten Lennox, and how could she explain her absence to a lady so particular? But for the moment she was spared the explanation, for the bark of Footles filled the street and Mr Dyce came into the lobby, laughing.
“You’re very joco!” said his sister, helping him off with his coat. “What are you laughing at?”
“The drollest thing imaginable,” said he. “I have just left Captain Consequence in a terrible rage about a letter that a boy has brought to him from Mrs Wright. He’s one of the folk that boast of paying as they go but never make a start. It seems he’s as much in debt to her as to most of the other merchants in the place, but wasn’t losing any sleep about it, for she’s such a softy. This letter has given him a start. He showed it to me, with the notion that it was a libel or a threat that might be actionable, but I assured him I couldn’t have written one more to the point myself. It said that unless he paid at once, something would be apt to happen that would create him the utmost astonishment.”
“Mercy on us! That’s not very like the widow: she must be getting desperate.”
“It was the wording of the thing amused me,” said Mr Dyce, walking into the parlour, still chuckling, “‘something will be apt to happen that will create you the utmost astonishment’ – it suggests such awful possibilities. And it’s going to serve it’s purpose too, for the Captain’s off to pay her, sure it means a scandal.”
Kate took the chance to rush round the kirk in search of her messenger. “This way for the big bargains!” cried some lads coming back from the Italian warehouse, or, “Hey! ye’ve missed a step” – which shows how funny we can be in the smallest burgh towns; but Kate said nothing, only “trash!” to herself in indignation, and tried by holding in her breath to keep from getting red.
The shop of the Pilgrim widow suffered from its signboard, that was “far too big for its job, like the sweep that stuck in my granny’s chimney,” as Mr Dyce said. Once the sign had been P. & A.’s, but P. & A.’s good lady tired of hearing her husband nicknamed the Italian, and it went back to the painter, who partly paid with it a debt to the Pilgrim widow, who long since rued her acquisition. She felt in her soul it was a worldly vanity, – that a signboard less obtrusive on the public eye would more befit herself and her two meek little windows, where fly-papers, fancy goods, sweetmeats, cigarettes, country eggs, and cordial invitations to the Pilgrims Mission Bethel every Friday (D.V.), eight o’clock, kept each other incongruous and dusty company. A decent pious widow, but ah! so wanting any saving sense of guile. The Pilgrim Mission was the thing she really lived for, and her shop was the Cross she bore. But to-day it was scarcely recognisable: the windows had been swept of their stale contents, and one was filled with piles of rosy apples, the other with nuts that poured in a tempting cataract from a cask upset with an air of reckless prodigality. A large hand-lettered bill was in each window; one said —
HALLOWE’EN! ARISE AND SHINE!
and the other —
DO IT NOW!
what was to be done being left to the imagination. All forenoon there had been a steady flow of customers, who came out of the shop with more than nuts or apples, greatly amazed at the change in the Pilgrim widow, who was cracking up her goods like any common sinner. Behind the railed and curtained box in which she was supposed to keep her books and pray for the whole community, there seemed to be some secret stimulating influence, for when bad payers tried to-day to get a thing on credit, and she was on the point of yielding, she would dart into the box and out again as hard as steel, insisting that at every Revolutionary Sale the terms were cash. She was giving bargains, but at her own price, never at her customers’, as it used to be. The Health Saline – extract of the finest fruit, Cooling, Refreshing, Invigorating, Tonic (though indeed it looked like an old friend from Rochelle with a dash of sugar and tartaric) – was down a ha’penny, to less than what it cost, according to another hand-done bill upon the counter. When they asked her how she could afford to sell the stuff below its cost, she seemed ashamed and startled, till she had a moment in behind the curtains, and then she told them it was all because of the large turn-over; she could not afford to sell the saline under cost if she did not sell it in tremendous quantities.
Did they want Ward’s Matchless Polishing Paste? – alas (after a dash behind the curtains) she was completely out of it. Of late it had been in such great demand that she got tired of ordering it every other week wholesale. Yes, she was out of Ward’s, but (again the curtained box) what about this wonderful line in calf-foot jelly, highly praised by the – by the connoisseurs? What were connoisseurs? A connoisseur (again on reference behind the curtains) was one of those wealthy men who could swallow anything.
“I’ll tell ye what it is,” said the tailor, “I see’t at last! She’s got a book in there; I’ve seen’t before – ‘The Way to Conduct a Retail Business’ – and when she runs behind, it’s to see what she should say to the customers. That’s where she got the notions for her windows and the ‘Do it Now!’”
But he was wrong – completely wrong, for when Kate came into the shop with “Have you seen Miss Lennox, Mrs Wright? I sent her here a message hours ago,” Lennox herself came from the curtained box saying, “Hello, Kate; saw you first! What can we do for you to-day?”
“My stars! my lady, you’ll catch it!” said the maid. “They’re waiting yonder on you for your dinner.”
“I was just heading for home,” said Bud, making for the door.
“My child! my child! my angel child!” cried the Pilgrim widow, going to kiss her, but Bud drew back.
“Not to-day, please; I’m miles too big for kissing to-day,” said she, and marched solemnly out of the Italian warehouse.
“What in the world were you doing away so long?” asked Kate. “Were you carrying on at anything?”
“I was paying for Charles’s pipe,” said the child, returning the money she had got for its purchase. “That’s the sweetest lady, Mrs Wright, but my! ain’t she Baby Mine when it settles down to business? When I wanted to buy the pipe, she was so tickled she wanted me to have it for nothing, seeing I was Mr Dyce’s niece. She said Uncle Dan was a man of God who saved her more than once from bankruptcy, and it was a pretty old pipe anyway, that had been in the window since the time she got changed and dropped brocaded dolmans. You’d think it made her ache to have folk come in her shop and spend money; I guess she was raised for use in a free soup-kitchen. I said I’d take the pipe for nothing if she’d throw in a little game with it. ‘What game?’ said she – oh, she’s a nice lady! – and I said I was just dying to have a try at keeping a really really shop, and would show her Chicago way. And you bet I did, Kate MacNeill!”
She came in with the soup, but no question was put till her uncle asked the blessing, and then, before a spoon was lifted, Auntie Bell said, “Lassie, lassie, where in the world have you been?”
“Keeping shop for Mrs Wright,” said Bud.
“Tcht! tcht! you’re beyond redemption,” cried her aunt. “A child like you keeping shop!”
“A bonny pair of shopkeepers, the widow and you! Which of you counted the change?” said Uncle Dan. “Tell us all about it.”
“Well, I had the loveliest time,” said Bud. “It would take till tea-time to tell just ’zactly what a lovely day it was, but I’ll hurry up and make it a front scene. What you said, Uncle Dan, about her running a shop on phil – on philanthropic principles made me keen to see her doing it, and I went down a message for Kate, and offered to help. She ’lowed herself she wasn’t the best there was in the land at keeping shop, and didn’t seem to make much money at it, but said thank the Lord she had the priceless boon of health. I was the first customer she’d set eyes on all the morning, ’cept a man that wanted change for half-a-crown and hadn’t the half-crown with him, but said he’d pay it when he didn’t see her again, and she said she felt sure that trade was going to take a turn. I said I thought it would turn quicker if – if – if she gave it a push herself, and she said she dared say there was something in it, and hoped I was in the fold. I said I was, sure, and at that she cried out ‘Hallelujah!’ Every other way she was a perfectly perfect lady; she made goo-goo eyes at me, and skipped round doing anything I told her. First she cleared all the old truck out of the windows, and filled them up with nuts and apples for Hallowe’en, till they looked the way windows never looked in Scotland in all creation before, I s’pose. ‘They’ll think it kind of daft,’ says she, scared-like, ‘they’re not like any other windows in the place.’ ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘and that’s the very thing to jar the eye of the passer-by.’ Jim Molyneux said a shop-window was like a play-bill, it wanted a star line – a feature – a whoop. Then I tried to think of the ’cute things shopkeepers print in Chicago, but couldn’t remember any ’cepting ‘Pants two dollars a leg, seats free,’ but the widow said she didn’t sell pants. Then I thought of some natty little cards I’d seen that said ‘Arise and Shine!’ and ‘Do it Now!’ so I got her to print these words good and big, and put them in the window. She wanted to know what they meant, but I said I couldn’t tell from Adam, but they would make the people wonder, and come in the shop to find out, and then it would be up to her to sell them something and pry the money out of them before they baulked. Oh, Auntie, how I go on!” and here Bud stopped almost breathless and a little ashamed.
“Go on! go on!” cried Ailie.
“Well, I got behind a curtain into a little box-office, where the widow kept a cash-book awfully doggy-eared, and a pile of printed sermons, and heaps of tracts about doing to others as you should be done by, and giving to the poor and lending to the Lord. She read bits of them to me, and said she sometimes wondered if Captain Brodie was too poor to pay for eighteen months’ tobacco, but she didn’t like to press him, seeing he had been in India and fought his country’s battles. She said she felt she must write him again for her money, but couldn’t think of what to say that would be Christian and polite and gentle, but still make him see she wanted the money pretty bad. I said I would tell her what to say that would suit just fine, and I dictated it – ”
“I saw the letter,” said Uncle Dan, twinkling through his glasses. “It was a work of genius, – go on! go on!”
“Then folk began to come in for nuts and apples, and asked what ‘Arise and Shine’ and ‘Do it Now’ meant. She said they were messages from the angel of the Lord – meaning me, I s’pose, – though, goodness knows, I’m not much of an angel, am I, Auntie Bell? Then the folk would fade away, looking a bit rattled, and come back in a while and ask the price of things. She’d say she wasn’t sure, but she thought about a shilling, or maybe ninepence seeing they had a young family, and then they’d want the stuff on credit, and she’d yammer away to them till I got wild. When they were gone I had a good heart-to-heart talk with her, and said phil – philanthropic principles were a great mistake in a small Italian warehouse, and that she ought to give the customers a chance of doing unto others as they would be done by. She made more goo-goo eyes at me, and said I was a caution, sure enough, and perhaps I was right, for she had never looked at it that way before. After that she spunked up wonderful. I got her to send Mr Wanton through the town with his bell, saying there was everything you wanted at Mrs Wright’s at bed-rock prices; and when people came in after that and wanted to get things for nothing, or next to it, she’d pop into the box where I lay low, and ask me what she was to say next, and then skip out to them as sharp as a tack and show they needn’t try to toy with her. She says she made more money to-day by my playing shop Chicago-way than she’d make in a week her own way. Why, I’m talking, and talking, and talking, and my soup’s stone-cold!”
“So’s mine,” said Uncle Dan, with a start.
“And mine!” said Auntie Ailie, with a smile.
“And mine too, I declare!” cried Miss Bell, with a laugh they all joined in, till Footles raised his voice protesting.
CHAPTER XVIII
Yes, that was one bright day in the dismal season, the day she tutored the Pilgrim widow in the newer commerce. There was a happy night to follow soon, and it is my grief that my pen cannot grasp the spirit of it, so that reading you would laugh with her and whiles be eerie. ’Tis true, there was little in the thing itself, as in most that at the age of twelve impress us for all our lives, but it met in some degree the expectations that her father’s tales of Scotland had sent home with her. Hitherto all had been natural and wellnigh commonplace that she had experienced, all except the folk so queer and kind and comical in a different way from those in Chicago, the sounds she could hear as she lay in her attic bed – the wind-call, and the honk of geese, and the feeling of an island hopelessly remote from the new bright world that best she knew, – remote and lost, a speck on the sea far, far from great America. The last things vaguely troubled her. For she was child enough as yet to shiver at things not touched by daylight nor seemingly made plain by the common-sense of man. She could laugh at the ghosts that curdled the blood of the maid of Colonsay; and yet at times, by an effort of the will, she could feel all Kate’s terror at some manifestation no more alarming than the cheep of mice or a death-watch ticking in a corner cupboard. These were but crude and vulgar fears, self-encouraged little actress terrors. It took more than the hint of ghost or the menace of the ticking insect in the wood to wake in her the feeling of worlds unrealised, encompassing, that she could get from casual verses in her Auntie Ailie’s book of Scottish ballads, or find o’erwhelm her of a sudden on looking from her window into the garden bare and pallid below the moon.
This night there should be moon according to the penny almanac, and Wanton Wully lit no lamps, but went home for a good sleep to himself, as his saying went, and left the burgh to such illumination as should come to it by the caprice of the clouds. It lay, the little place, for most of the night in darkness: a mirk so measureless deep, when the shops were shut, that the red-lit skylight windows at the upper end of the town seemed by some miracle to lift themselves and soar into the heavens – square, monstrous flitting stars to the vision of Bud, as she stood with Auntie Ailie at the door watching for Uncle Dan’s return from his office. To bring the soaring windows back to their natural situation, she had to stand a little way inside the lobby and establish their customary place against the darkness by the lintel of the door.
From the other side of the church came a sound of dull monotonous drumming – no cheerful rhythmic beat like the drumming of John Taggart, but a mournful thumping, fitful in flaws of the bland night wind.
“What’s that, Auntie?” she asked.
“The guizards,” said Miss Ailie, looking down upon her in the lobby light with a smile she could not see. “Did you never hear of the guizards, Bud?”
Bud had never heard of the guizards; that was one thing, surely, her father had forgotten. She had heard of Hallowe’en, she said, when further questioned. Wasn’t it the night for ducking into tubs for apples? The Pilgrim widow had told her Hallowe’en was coming, and it was for Hallowe’en she had sold so many nuts and apples; but the widow said she felt ashamed to do it, for Hallowe’en was not approved of by the Mission, being idolatrous and gay. “Is it very gay?” asked Bud anxiously.
“So I used to think it,” said her aunt.
“Then I s’pose it must be wicked,” said the child regretfully. “I’d have expected you’d have Hallowe’en night here in the house if it hadn’t been very bad. That widow did me a lot of good, showing me what a heap of happy things are full of sin. She knew them all! I s’pose she got them in the tracts. Yes, she did me a lot of good; I – I almost wish I hadn’t met that widow.”
“Do you feel wicked when you’re gay?” asked Miss Ailie.
“Mercy on us! not a mite!” said Bud. “I feel plumb full of goodness when I’m gay; but that’s my youth and innocence. The widow says it is, and I guess what she says goes.”
“Still, do you know, my dear, I’d risk a little gaiety now and then,” said Auntie Ailie. “Who knows? The widow, though a worthy lady, is what in Scotland we call an auld wife, and it’s generally admitted that auld wives of either sex have no monopoly of wisdom. If you’re wanting pious guidance, Bud, I don’t know where you’ll get it better than from Auntie Bell; and she fairly dotes on Hallowe’en and the guizards. By-and-by you’ll see the guizards, and – and – well, just wait and we’ll find what else is to be seen. I do wish your Uncle Dan would hurry.”
The street was quite deserted, but did not show its vacancy until the clouds for a moment drifted off the moon that rolled behind the steeple. Then the long grey stretch of tenements came out unreal and pale on the other side of the street, their eaves and chimneys throwing inky shadows, their red-lit windows growing of a sudden wan. Over them hung the ponderous kirk, the master shadow, and all – the white-harled walls, the orange windows, the glittering cold and empty street – seemed like the vision of a dream. Then the clouds wrapped up the moon again, and the black was the black of Erebus. But as it fell, the dull drums seemed to come nearer, and from the head of the street, the windy corner where Uncle Dan had his office, small moons came, purple and golden, fantastically carved. They ran from house to house, and grouped in galaxies, or singly fell apart, swinging and giddy orbs. For a moment Bud looked at them bewildered, then gave a happy scream.
“The lanterns! the lanterns! look at the lanterns, Auntie. Is that Hallowe’en?”
“That’s part of it, at least,” said her Aunt. “These are the guizards with their turnip lanterns; they’re going round the houses singing; by-and-by we’ll hear them.”
“My! I wish to goodness I had a lantern like that. To swing a lantern like that ’d feel like being a lighthouse or the statue of Liberty at New York. I’d rather have a turnip lantern than a raft of dolls.”
“Did you never have one?”
“No,” said Bud sorrowfully. “You have no idea what a poor mean place Chicago is – not a thing but common electric light!” and Miss Ailie smiled gleefully to herself again like one possessed of a lovely secret. “I wish that brother of mine would come quickly,” she said, and at the moment he came out of the darkness to them with a comical look of embarrassment in his face and in his hand an unlighted turnip lantern!
“Here, Bud,” said he, “take this, quickly, before some silly body sees me with it and thinks it’s for myself. I have the name, I know, of being daft enough already, and if it gets about the country that Daniel Dyce was going round at Hallowe’en with a turnip lantern, they would think he had lost his head in a double sense and it would be very bad for business.”
“Uncle!” cried the child in ecstasy, “you’re the loveliest, sweetest man in the whole wide world.”
“I daresay,” said he. “I have been much admired when I was younger. But in this case don’t blame me. I wash my hands of the responsibility. I got my orders for that thing from your Auntie Bell.”
“My! ain’t it cute? Did you make it?” asked Bud, surveying the rudely carved exterior with delight, and her uncle, laughing, put on his glasses to look at it himself.
“No,” said he, “though I’ve made a few of them in my time. All that’s needed is a knife or a mussel-shell, and a dose of Gregory’s Mixture in the morning.”
“What’s the Gregory’s Mixture for?”
“In making a turnip lantern you eat the whole inside of it,” said Mr Dyce. “Perhaps I might have made this one myself if it wasn’t that I know I would hate to see the inside wasted, and still I have mind of the Gregory. I bought the lantern from a boy at the head of the street who was looking very gash and ill, and seemed suspiciously glad to get quit of it. I’m thinking that his Gregory’s nearly due.”
Bud hardly listened – she was so taken up with her gift. She pounced at the handle of the kitchen door and found it snibbed within. “Kate! Kate!” she cried, “let me in to light my lantern.”
Kate was to be heard moving within, and there was a curious sound of giggling, but no answer.
“Open the door, quick, quick!” cried Bud again; and this time Auntie Bell, inside, said, “Yes, open, Kate, I think we’re ready.”
The door of the kitchen opened, and before the eyes of the child was a spectacle the more amazing and delightful since all day they had taken pains to keep the preparations secret. A dozen children, who had been smuggled in by the back-door in the close, were seated round a tub of water with floating apples, and they were waiting her presence to begin their fun.
Oh, how happy was that hour! But not just then came the thrill of which I’m thinking. It was not the laughter and the ducking in the tub, the discoveries of rings and buttons, thimbles, and scuddy little dolls and silver pieces hidden in the mound of champed potatoes Kate had cooked; nor the supper that followed, nor the mating of nuts on the fire-ribs that gave the eerie flavour of old time and the book of ballads. She liked them all; her transport surely was completed when the guizards entered black-faced, garmented as for a masque, each thumping a sheepskin stretched on a barrel-hoop – the thing we call a dallan. She had never discovered before what a soul of gaiety was in Auntie Bell, demure so generally, practising sobriety, it might seem, as if she realised her daffing days were over and it was time for her to remember all her years. To-night Miss Bell outdid even Ailie in her merriment, led the games in the spacious kitchen, and said such droll things, and kept the company in such a breeze that Ailie cried at last, “I think, Bell, that you’re fey!”
“Indeed, and I daresay you’re right,” admitted Bell, sinking in a chair exhausted. “At my time of life it’s daft; I have not laughed so much since I was at Barbara Mushet’s seminary.”
Not these things, but the half-hour after, was what made the evening memorable for the child. Nothing would satisfy her but that she should light her lantern and convoy the other children home, so Kate went with her, and the happy band went through the street, each dropping off at her own house front till the last was gone, and then Bud and the maid turned back.
But Kate had a project in her mind that had been there all night since she had burned two nuts for herself and Charles in the kitchen fire, and found them willing to flame quite snug together. That so far, was satisfactory, but she wanted more assurance of the final triumph of her love. There was, it seemed, a skilful woman up the lane who knew spells and magic, read tea-cups and the cards, and could unravel dreams. Notably was she good at Hallowe’en devices, and Bud must come and see her, for it would not take a minute.
They found their way by the light of the lantern to the spaewife’s door, and to a poor confidant of fate and fortune surely, since she had not found them kinder to herself, for she dwelt in a hovel where foolish servant-girls came at night with laughter and fears to discover what the future held for them. Bud, standing on the floor in the circle of light from her own lantern, watched the woman drop the white of an egg in a glass of water. In the clot of the albumen, which formed some wavering vague figures, she peered and found, she said, the masts of ships and a crowded harbour, and that meant a sailor husband.
