Kitabı oku: «The Daft Days», sayfa 3
“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 répertoire 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.”
“I know,” said Alison. “It’s an old British story; you’ll hear it often from our visitors, if you’re spared. But we’re lucky with our Kate; we seem to give her complete satisfaction, or, at all events, she puts up with us. When she feels she can’t put up with us any longer, she hurls herself on the morning newspaper to look at the advertisements for ladies’ maids and housekeepers with £50 a-year, and makes up her mind to apply at once, but can never find a pen that suits her before we make her laugh. The servant in the house of Dyce who laughs is lost. You’ll like Kate, Bud. We like her; and I notice that if you like anybody they generally like you back.”
“I’m so glad,” said Bud with enthusiasm. “If there’s one thing under the canopy I am, I’m a liker.”
They had reached the door of the house without seeing the slightest sign that the burgh was interested in them, but they were no sooner in than a hundred tongues were discussing the appearance of the little American. Ailie took off Bud’s cloak and hood, and pushed her into the kitchen, with a whisper to her that she was to make Kate’s acquaintance, and be sure and praise her scones, then left her and flew upstairs, with a pleasant sense of personal good-luck. It was so sweet to know that brother William’s child was anything but a diffy.
Bud stood for a moment in the kitchen, bashful, for it must not be supposed she lacked a childish shyness. Kate, toasting bread at the fire, turned round and felt a little blate herself, but smiled at her, such a fine expansive smile, it was bound to put the child at ease. “Come away in, my dear, and take a bite,” said the maid. It is so they greet you – simple folk! – in the isle of Colonsay.
The night was coming on, once more with snowy feathers. Wanton Wully lit the town. He went from lamp to lamp with a ladder, children in his train chanting and he expostulating with “I know you fine, the whole of you; at least I know the boys. Stop you till I see your mothers!” Miss Minto’s shop was open, and shamefaced lads went dubiously in to buy ladies’ white gloves, for with gloves they tryst their partners here at New Year balls, and to-night was Samson’s fiddle giggling at the inn. The long tenement lands, as flat and high as cliffs, and built for all eternity, at first dark grey in the dusk, began to glow in every window, and down the stairs and from the closes flowed exceeding cheerful sounds. Green fires of wood and coal sent up a cloud above these dwellings, tea-kettles jigged, and sang. A thousand things were happening in the street, but for once the maid of Colonsay restrained her interest in the window. “Tell me this, what did you say your name was?” she asked.
“Leerie, leerie, light the lamps,
Long legs and crooked shanks!” —
“I’m Miss Lennox Brenton Dyce,” said Bud primly, “but the Miss don’t amount to much till I’m old enough to get my hair up.”
“You must be tired coming so far. All the way from that Chickagoo!”
“Chicago,” suggested Bud politely.
“Just that! Chickagoo or Chicago, it depends on the way you spell it,” said Kate readily. “I was brought up to call it Chickagoo. What a length to come on New Year’s day! Were you not frightened? Try one of them brown biscuits. And how are they all keeping in America?”
She asked the question with such tender solicitude that Bud saw no humour in it, and answered gravely —
“Pretty spry, thank you. Have you been there?”
“Me!” cried Kate, with her bosom heaving at the very thought. Then her Highland vanity came to her rescue. “No,” she said, “I have not been exactly what you might call altogether there, but I had a cousin that started for Australia, and got the length of Paisley. It’ll be a big place America? Put butter on it.”
“The United States of America are bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by the Pacific, on the south by Mexico and the Gulf, and on the north by an imaginary line called Canada. The State of New York alone is as large as England,” said Bud glibly, repeating a familiar lesson.
“What a size!” cried Kate. “Take another of them brown biscuits. Scotland’s not slack neither for size; there’s Glasgow and Oban, and Colonsay and Stornoway. There’ll not be hills in America?’
“There’s no hills, just mountains,” said Bud. “The chief mountain ranges are the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. They’re about the biggest mountains in the world.”
“Talking about big things, look at the big pennyworth of milk we get here,” said Kate, producing a can: it was almost the last ditch of her national pride.
The child looked gravely into the can, and then glanced shrewdly at the maid.
“It isn’t a pennyworth,” said she sharply, “it’s twopence worth.”
“My stars! how did you know that?” said Kate, much taken aback.
“’Cause you’re bragging. Think I don’t know when anybody’s bragging?” said Bud. “And when a body brags about a place or anything, they zaggerate, and just about double things.”
“You’re not canny,” said Kate, thrusting the milk-can back hastily on the kitchen dresser. “Don’t spare the butter on your biscuit. They tell me there’s plenty of money in America. I would not wonder, eh?”
“Why, everybody’s got money to throw at the birds there,” said Bud, with some of the accent as well as the favourite phrase of Jim Molyneux.
“They have little to do; forbye, it’s cruelty. Mind you, there’s plenty of money here too; your uncle has a desperate lot of it. He was wanting to go away to America and bring you home whenever he heard – whenever he heard – Will you not try another of them biscuits? It will do you no harm.”
“I know,” said Bud gravely, – “whenever he heard about my father being dead.”
“I think we’re sometimes very stupid, us from Colonsay,” said the maid regretfully. “I should have kept my mouth shut about your father. Take two biscuits, my dear; or maybe you would rather have short-cake. Yes, he was for going there and then – even if it cost a pound, I daresay, – but changed his mind when he heard yon man Molyneux was bringing you.”
Footles, snug in the child’s lap, shared the biscuits and barked for more.
“I love little Footles,
His coat is so warm,
And if I don’t tease him
He’ll do me no harm,”
said Bud, burying her head in his mane.
“Good Lord! did you make that yourself, or just keep mind of it?” asked the astounded Kate.
“I made it just right here,” said Bud coolly. “Didn’t you know I could make poetry? Why, you poor perishing soul, I’m just a regular wee – wee whitterick at poetry! It goes sloshing round in my head, and it’s simply pie for me to make it. Here’s another —
‘Lives of great men oft remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.’
I just dash them off. I guess I’ll have to get up bright and early to-morrow and touch that one up some. Mostly you can’t make them good the first try, and then you’re bound to go all over them from the beginning and put the good in here and there. That’s art, Jim says. He knew an artist who’d finish a picture with everything quite plain about it, and then say, ‘Now for the Art!’ and fuzz it all with a hard brush.”
“My stars! what things you know!” exclaimed the maid. “You’re clever – tremendous clever! What’s your age?”
“I was born mighty well near ten years ago,” said Bud, as if she were a centenarian.
Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever, though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that. Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think herself anything out of the ordinary. Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common enough with Young America. But Bud, from Maryfield to her uncle’s door, had been a “caution” to the plainly admiring mail-driver; a kind of fairy princess to Wanton Wully Oliver and his wife; the surprise of her aunts had been only half concealed, and here was the maid in an undisguised enchantment! The vanity of ten-year-old was stimulated; for the first time in her life she felt decidedly superior.
“It was very brave of me to come all this way in a ship at ten years old,” she proceeded.
“I once came to Oban along with a steamer myself,” said Kate, “but och, that’s nothing, for I knew a lot of the drovers. Just fancy you coming from America! Were you not lonely?”
“I was dre’ffle lonely,” said Bud, who, in fact, had never known a moment’s dullness across the whole Atlantic. “There was I leaving my native land, perhaps never to set eyes on its shores evermore, and coming to a far country I didn’t know the least thing about. I was leaving all my dear young friends, and the beautiful Mrs Molyneux, and her faithful dog Dodo, and – ” here she squeezed a tear from her eyes, and stopped to think of circumstances even more touching.
“My poor wee hen!” cried Kate, distressed. “Don’t you greet, and I’ll buy you something.”
“And I didn’t know what sort of uncle and aunties they might be here, – whether they’d be cruel and wicked or not, or whether they’d keep me or not. Little girls most always have cruel uncles and aunties – you can see that in the books.”
“You were awful stupid about that bit of it,” said the maid emphatically. “I’m sure anybody could have told you about Mr Dyce and his sisters.”
“And then it was so stormy,” proceeded Bud quickly, in search of more moving considerations. “I made a poem about that too, – I just dashed it off; the first verse goes —
‘The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast – ’
but I forget the rest, ’cept that
‘ – they come to wither there
Away from their childhood’s land.’
The waves were mountains high, and whirled over the deck, and – ”
“My goodness, you would get all wet!” said Kate, putting her hand on Bud’s shoulder to feel if she were dry yet. Honest tears were in her own eyes at the thought of such distressing affairs.
“The ship at last struck on a rock,” proceeded Bud, “so the captain lashed me – ”
“I would lash him, the villain!” cried the indignant maid.
“I don’t mean that; he tied me – that’s lash in books – to the mast, and then – and then – well, then we waited calmly for the end,” said Bud, at the last of her resources for ocean tragedy.
Kate’s tears were streaming down her cheeks, at this conjured vision of youth in dire distress. “Oh dear! oh dear! my poor wee hen!” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“Bud! coo-ie! coo-ie!” came the voice of Aunt Ailie along the lobby, but Bud was so entranced with the effect of her imaginings that she paid no heed, and Kate’s head was wrapped in her apron.
“Don’t cry, Kate; I wouldn’t cry if I was you,” said the child at last, soothingly. “Maybe it’s not true.”
“I’ll greet if I like,” insisted the maid. “Fancy you in that awful shipwreck! It’s enough to scare anybody from going anywhere. Oh dear! oh dear!” and she wept more copiously than ever.
“Don’t cry,” said Bud again. “It’s silly to drizzle like that. Why, great Queen of Sheba! I was only joshing you: it was as calm on that ship as a milk sociable.”
Kate drew down the apron from her face and stared at her. Her meaning was only half plain, but it was a relief to know that things had not been quite so bad as she first depicted them. “A body’s the better of a bit greet, whiles,” she said philosophically, drying her eyes.
“That’s what I say,” agreed Bud. “That’s why I told you all that. Do you know, child, I think you and I are going to be great friends.” She said this with the very tone and manner of Alison, whose words they were to herself, and turned round hastily and embarrassed at a laugh behind her to find her Aunt had heard herself thus early imitated.
