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CHAPTER VII
If Molyneux, the actor, was to blame for sending this child of ten on her journey into Scotland without convoy, how much worse was his offence that he sent no hint of her character to the house of Dyce? She was like the carpet-bag George Jordon found at the inn door one day without a name on it, and saying “There’s nothing like thrift in a family,” took home immediately, to lament over for a week because he had not the key to open it. There should have been a key to Lennox Brenton Dyce, but Molyneux, a man of post-cards and curt and cryptic epistles generally, never thought of that, so that it took some days for the folk she came among to pick the lock. There was fun in the process, it cannot be denied, but that was because the Dyces were the Dyces; had they been many another folk she might have been a mystery for years, and in the long-run spoiled completely. Her mother had been a thousand women in her time, – heroines good and evil, fairies, princesses, paupers, maidens, mothers, shy and bold, plain or beautiful, young or old, as the play of the week demanded, – a play-actress, in a word. And now she was dead and buried, the bright white lights on her no more, the music and the cheering done. But not all dead and buried, for some of her was in her child.
Bud was born a mimic. I tell you this at once, because so many inconsistencies will be found in her I should otherwise look foolish to present her portrait for a piece of veritable life. Not a mimic of voice and manner only, but a mimic of people’s minds, so that for long – until the climax came that was to change her when she found herself – she was the echo and reflection of the last person she spoke with. She borrowed minds and gestures as later she borrowed Grandma Buntain’s pelerine and bonnet. She could be all men and all women except the plainly dull or wicked, – but only on each occasion for a little while; by-and-by she was herself again.
And so it was that for a day or two she played with the phrase and accent of Wanton Wully Oliver, or startled her aunts with an unconscious rendering of Kate’s Highland accent, her “My stars!” and “Mercy me’s!” and “My wee hens!”
The daft days (as we call New Year time) passed – the days of careless merriment, that were but the start of Bud’s daft days, that last with all of us for years if we are lucky. The town was settling down; the schools were opening on Han’sel Monday, and Bud was going – not to the Grammar School after all, but to the Pigeons’ Seminary. Have patience, and by-and-by I will tell about the Pigeons.
Bell had been appalled to find the child, at the age of ten, apparently incredibly neglected in her education.
“Of course you would be at some sort of school yonder in America?” she had said at an early opportunity, not hoping for much, but ready to learn of some hedgerow academy in spite of all the papers said of Yales and Harvards and the like.
“No, I never was at school; I was just going when father died,” said Bud, sitting on a sofa, wrapt in a cloak of Ailie’s, feeling extremely tall and beautiful and old.
“What! Do you sit there and tell me they did not send you to school?” cried her aunt, so stunned that the child delighted in her power to startle and amaze. “That’s America for you! Ten years old, and not the length of your alphabets, – it’s what one might expect from a heathen land of niggers, and lynchers, and presidents. I was the best sewer and speller in Miss Mushet’s long before I was ten. My lassie, let me tell you you have come to a country where you’ll get your education! We would make you take it at its best if we had to live on meal. Look at your Auntie Ailie – French and German, and a hand like copperplate; it’s a treat to see her at the old scrutoire, no way put about, composing. Just goes at it like lightning! I do declare if your Uncle Dan was done, Ailie could carry on the business, all except the aliments and sequestrations. It beats all! Ten years old and not to know the A B C!”
“Oh, but I do,” said Bud quickly. “I learned the alphabet off the play-bills, – the big G’s first, because there’s so many Greats and Grands and Gorgeouses in them. And then Mrs Molyneux used to let me try to read Jim’s press notices. She read them first every morning sitting up in bed at breakfast, and said, ‘My! wasn’t he a great man?’ and then she’d cry a little, ’cause he never got justice from the managers, for they were all mean and jealous of him. Then she’d spray herself with the Peau d’espagne and eat a cracker. And the best papers there was in the land said the part of the butler in the second act was well filled by Mister Jim Molyneux; or among others in a fine cast were J. Molyneux, Ralph Devereux, and O. G. Tarpoll.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my poor wee whitterick; but it’s all haivers,” said Miss Bell. “Can you spell?”
“If the words are not too big, or silly ones where it’s ‘ei’ or ‘ie,’ and you have to guess,” said Bud.
“Spell cat.”
Bud stared at her incredulously.
“Spell cat,” repeated her aunt.
“K-a-t-t,” said Bud (oh, naughty Bud!).
“Mercy!” cried Bell with horrified hands in the air. “Off you pack to-morrow to the Seminary. I wouldn’t wonder if you did not know a single word of the Shorter Catechism. Perhaps they have not such a thing in that awful heathen land you came from?”
Bud could honestly say she had never heard of the Shorter Catechism.
“My poor neglected bairn,” said her aunt piteously, “you’re sitting there in the dark with no conviction of sin, and nothing bothering you, and you might be dead to-morrow! Mind this, that ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’ Say that.”
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever,” repeated Bud obediently, rolling her r’s and looking solemn like her aunt.
“Did you ever hear of Robert Bruce, him that watched the spiders?”
Here, too, the naughty Bud protested ignorance.
“He was the saviour of his country,” said Bell. “Mind that!”
“Why, Auntie, I thought it was George Washington,” said Bud, surprised. “I guess if you’re looking for a little wee stupid, it’s me.”
“We’re talking about Scotland,” said Miss Bell severely. “He saved Scotland. It was well worth while! Can you do your sums?”
“I can not,” said Bud emphatically. “I hate them.”
Miss Bell said not a word more; she was too distressed at such confessed benightedness; but she went out of the parlour to search for Ailie. Bud forgot she was beautiful and tall and old in Ailie’s cloak; she was repeating to herself Man’s Chief End with rolling r’s, and firmly fixing in her memory the fact that Robert Bruce, not George Washington, was the saviour of his country and watched spiders.
Ailie was out, and so her sister found no ear for her bewailings over the child’s neglected education till Mr Dyce came in humming the tune of the day – “Sweet Afton” – to change his hat for one more becoming to a sitting of the Sheriff Court. He was searching for his good one in what he was used to call “the piety press,” for there was hung his Sunday clothes, when Bell distressfully informed him that the child could not so much as spell cat.
“Nonsense I don’t believe it,” said he. “That would be very unlike our William.”
“It’s true, – I tried her myself!” said Bell. “She was never at a school: isn’t it just deplorable?”
“H’m!” said Mr Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”
“She does not know a word of her Catechism, nor the name of Robert Bruce, and says she hates counting.”
“Hates counting!” repeated Mr Dyce, wonderfully cheering up, “that’s hopeful; it reminds me of myself. Forbye its gey like brother William. His way of counting was ‘£1.10. in my pocket, £2 that I’m owing some one, and 10s. I get to-morrow – that’s £5 I have; what will I buy you now?’ The worst of arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination. Two and two’s four and you’re done with it; there’s no scope for either fun or fancy as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark and swapped their partners by an accident.”
“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still, “and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”
“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan – “excuse my grammar,” and he laughed. “It’s an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little patches. I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”
But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still practising Man’s Chief End, so engrossed in the exercise she never heard him enter. He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.
“Guess who,” said he, in a shrill falsetto.
“It’s Robert Bruce,” said Bud, without moving.
“No, – cold – cold! – guess again,” said her uncle, growling like Giant Blunderbore.
“I’ll mention no names,” said she, “but it’s mighty like Uncle Dan.”
He stood in front of her and put on a serious face,
“What’s this I am hearing, Miss Lennox,” said he, “about a little girl who doesn’t know a lot of things nice little girls ought to know?”
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever,” repeated Bud reflectively. “I’ve got that all right, but what does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” said Mr Dyce, a bit taken aback. “You tell her, Bell; what does it mean? I must not be late for the court.”
“You’re far cleverer than I am,” said Bell. “Tell her yourself.”
“It means,” said Daniel Dyce the lawyer, seating himself on the sofa beside his niece, “that man in himself is a gey poor soul, no’ worth a pin, though he’s apt to think the world was made for his personal satisfaction. At the best he’s but an instrument – a harp of a thousand strings God bends to hear in His leisure. He made that harp – the heart and mind of man – when He was in a happy hour. Strings hale and strings broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we can do’s to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God Who loves fine music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He put them birling in the void. To glorify’s to wonder and adore, and who keeps the wondering humble heart, the adoring eye, is to God pleasing exceedingly. Sing, lassie, sing, sing, sing, inside ye, even if ye are as timmer as a cask. God knows I have not much of a voice myself, but I’m full of nobler airs than ever crossed my rusty thrapple. To be grateful always, and glad things are no worse, is a good song to start the morning.”
“Ah, but sin, Dan, sin!” said Bell, sighing, for she always feared her own light-heartedness. “We may be too joco.”
“Say ye so?” he cried, turning to his sister with a flame upon his visage. “By the heavens above us, no! Sin might have been eternal; each abominable thought might have kept in our minds, constant day and night from the moment that it bred there; the theft we did might keep everlastingly our hand in our neighbour’s kist as in a trap; the knife we thrust with might have kept us thrusting for ever and for ever. But no, – God’s good! sleep comes, and the clean morning, and the morning is Christ, and every moment of time is a new opportunity to amend. It is not sin that is eternal, it is righteousness, and peace. Joco! We cannot be too joco, having our inheritance.”
He stopped suddenly, warned by a glance of his sister’s, and turned to look in his niece’s face to find bewilderment there. The mood that was not often published by Dan Dyce left him in a flash, and he laughed and put his arms round her.
“I hope you’re a lot wiser for my sermon, Bud,” said he; “I can see you have pins and needles worse than under the Reverend Mr Frazer on the Front. What’s the American for haivers – for foolish speeches?”
“Hot air,” said Bud promptly.
“Good!” said Dan Dyce, rubbing his hands together. “What I’m saying may seem just hot air to you, but it’s meant. You do not know the Shorter Catechism; never mind; there’s a lot of it I’m afraid I do not know myself; but the whole of it is in that first answer to Man’s Chief End. Reading and writing, and all the rest of it, are of less importance, but I’ll not deny they’re gey and handy. You’re no Dyce if you don’t master them easily enough.”
He kissed her and got gaily up and turned to go. “Now,” said he, “for the law, seeing we’re done with the gospels. I’m a conveyancing lawyer – though you’ll not know what that means – so mind me in your prayers.”
Bell went out into the lobby after him, leaving Bud in a curious frame of mind, for Man’s Chief End, and Bruce’s spider, and the word “joco,” all tumbled about in her, demanding mastery.
“Little help I got from you, Dan!” said Bell to her brother. “You never even tried her with a multiplication table.”
“What’s seven times nine?” he asked her, with his fingers on the handle of the outer door, his eyes mockingly mischievous.
She flushed, and laughed, and pushed him on the shoulder. “Go away with you!” said she. “Fine you ken I could never mind seven times!”
“No Dyce ever could,” said he, – “excepting Ailie. Get her to put the little creature through her tests. If she’s not able to spell cat at ten she’ll be an astounding woman by the time she’s twenty.”
The end of it was that Aunt Ailie, whenever she came in, upon Bell’s report, went over the street to Rodger’s shop and made a purchase. As she hurried back with it, bare-headed, in a cool drizzle of rain that jewelled her wonderful hair, she felt like a child herself again. The banker-man saw her from his lodging as she flew across the street with sparkling eyes and eager lips, the roses on her cheeks, and was sure, foolish man! that she had been for a new novel or maybe a cosmetique, since in Rodger’s shop they sell books and balms and ointments. She made the quiet street magnificent for a second – a poor wee second, and then, for him, the sun went down. The tap of the knocker on the door she closed behind her struck him on the heart. You may guess, good women, if you like, that at the end of the book the banker-man is to marry Ailie, but you’ll be wrong; she was not thinking of the man at all at all – she had more to do; she was hurrying to open the gate of gold to her little niece.
“I’ve brought you something wonderful,” said she to the child – “better than dolls, better than my cloak, better than everything; guess what it is.”
Bud wrinkled her brows. “Ah, dear!” she sighed, “we may be too joco! And I’m to sing, sing, sing even if I’m as – timmer as a cask, and Robert Bruce is the saviour of his country.” She marched across the room, trailing Ailie’s cloak with her, in an absurd caricature of Bell’s brisk manner. Yet not so much the actress engrossed in her performance, but what she tried to get a glimpse of what her aunt concealed.
“You need not try to see it,” said Ailie, smiling, with the secret in her breast. “You must honestly guess.”
“Better’n dolls and candies, oh, my!” said Bud; “I hope it’s not the Shorter Catechism,” she concluded, looking so grave that her aunt laughed.
“It’s not the Catechism,” said Ailie; “try again. Oh, but you’ll never guess! It’s a key.”
“A key?” repeated Bud, plainly cast down.
“A gold key,” said her aunt.
“What for?” asked Bud.
Ailie sat herself down on the floor and drew the child upon her knees. She had a way of doing that which made her look like a lass in her teens; indeed, it was most pleasing if the banker-man could just have seen it! “A gold key,” she repeated, lovingly, in Bud’s ear. “A key to a garden – the loveliest garden, with flowers that last the whole year round. You can pluck and pluck at them and they’re never a single one the less. Better than sweet peas! But that’s not all, there’s a big garden-party to be at it – ”
“My! I guess I’ll put on my best glad rags,” said Bud. “And the hat with pink.” Then a fear came to her face. “Why, Aunt Ailie, you can’t have a garden-party this time of the year,” and she looked at the window down whose panes the rain was now streaming.
“This garden-party goes on all the time,” said Ailie. “Who cares about the weather? Only very old people; not you and I. I’ll introduce you to a lot of nice people – Di Vernon, and – you don’t happen to know a lady called Di Vernon, do you, Bud?”
“I wouldn’t know her if she was handed to me on a plate with parsley trimmings,” said Bud promptly.
“ – Di Vernon, then, and Effie Deans, and Little Nell, and the Marchioness; and Richard Swiveller, and Tom Pinch, and the Cranford folks, and Juliet Capulet – ”
“She must belong to one of the first families,” said Bud. “I have a kind of idea that I have heard of her.”
“And Mr Falstaff – such a naughty man, but nice too! And Rosalind.”
“Rosalind!” cried Bud. “You mean Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’?”
Ailie stared at her with astonishment. “You amazing child!” said she, “who told you about ‘As You Like It’?”
“Nobody told me; I just read about her when Jim was learning the part of Charles the Wrestler he played on six ’secutive nights in the Waldorf.”
“Read it!” exclaimed her aunt. “You mean he or Mrs Molyneux read it to you.”
“No, I read it myself,” said Bud.
“‘Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious Court?’”
She threw Aunt Ailie’s cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim Molyneux.
“I thought you couldn’t read,” said Ailie. “You little fraud! You made Aunt Bell think you couldn’t spell cat.”
“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud. “I was just pretending. I’m apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks I make Works. I can read anything; I’ve read books that big it gave you cramp. I s’pose you were only making-believe about that garden, and you haven’t any key at all, but I don’t mind; I’m not kicking.”
Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had bought to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters – the slim little grey-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first lessons. She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read its title on the cover. Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not quite at her ease for once.
“I’m dre’ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said. “It was wicked to pretend just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble. Father wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at her ease again. “I’m too glad you’re not so far behind as Aunt Bell imagined. So you like books? Capital! And Shakespeare no less! What do you like best, now?”
“Poetry,” said Bud. “Particularly the bits I don’t understand, but just about almost. I can’t bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once I know it all plain and there’s no more to it, I – I – I love to amble on. I – why! I make poetry myself.”
“Really?” said Ailie with twinkling eyes.
“Sort of poetry,” said Bud. “Not so good as ‘As You Like It’ – not nearly so good, of course! I have loads of truly truly poetry inside me, but it sticks at the bends, and then I get bits that fit, made by somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first. Other times I’m the real Winifred Wallace.”
“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie inquiringly.
“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud composedly. “I’m her. It’s my – it’s my poetry name. ‘Bud Dyce’ wouldn’t be any use for the magazines; it’s not dinky enough.”
“Bless me, child, you don’t tell me you write poetry for the magazines?” said her astonished aunt.
“No,” said Bud, “but I’ll be pretty liable to when I’m old enough to wear specs. That’s if I don’t go on the stage.”
“On the stage!” exclaimed Ailie, full of wild alarm.
“Yes,” said the child, “Mrs Molyneux said I was a born actress.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” said Aunt Ailie, staring into vacancy.
CHAPTER VIII
Daniel Dyce had an office up the street at the windy corner facing the Cross, with two clerks in it and a boy who docketed letters and ran errands. Once upon a time there was a partner, – Cleland & Dyce the firm had been, – but Cleland was a shy and melancholy man whose only hours of confidence and gaiety came to him after injudicious drams. ’Twas patent to all how his habits seized him, but nobody mentioned it except in a whisper, sometimes as a kind of little accident, for in everything else he was the perfect gentleman, and here we never like to see the honest gentry down. All men liked Colin Cleland, and many would share his jovial hours who took their law business elsewhere than to Cleland & Dyce. That is the way of the world, too; most men keep their jovial-money in a different pocket from where they keep their cash. The time came when it behoved Mr Cleland to retire. Men who knew the circumstances said Dan Dyce paid rather dear for that retirement, and indeed it might be so in the stricter way of commerce, but the lawyer was a Christian who did not hang up his conscience in the “piety press” with his Sunday clothes. He gave his partner a good deal more than he asked.
“I hope you’ll come in sometimes and see me whiles at night and join in a glass of toddy,” said Mr Cleland.
“I’ll certainly come and see you,” said Dan Dyce. And then he put his arm affectionately through that of his old partner, and added, “I would – I would ca’ canny wi’ the toddy, Colin,” coating the pill in sweet and kindly Scots. Thank God, we have two tongues in our place, and can speak the bitter truth in terms that show humility and love, and not the sense of righteousness, dictate.
“Eh! What for?” said Mr Cleland, his vanity at once in arms.
Dan Dyce looked in his alarmed and wavering eyes a moment, and thought, “What’s the use? He knows himself, they always do!”
“For fear – for fear of fat,” he said, with a little laugh, tapping with his finger on his quondam partner’s widening waistcoat. “There are signs of a prominent profile, Colin. If you go on as you’re doing it will be a dreadful expense for watch-guards.”
Colin Cleland at once became the easy-osey man again, and smiled. “Fat, man! it’s not fat,” said he, clapping himself on the waistcoat; “it’s information. Do you know, Dan, for a second, there, I thought you meant to be unkind, and it would be devilish unlike you to be unkind. I thought you meant something else. The breath of vulgar suspicion has mentioned drink.”
“It’s a pity that!” said Mr Dyce, “for a whole cask of cloves will not disguise the breath of suspicion.”
It was five years now since Colin Cleland retired among his toddy rummers, and if this were a fancy story I would be telling you how he fell, and fell, and fell; but the truth – it’s almost lamentable – is that the old rogue throve on leisure and ambrosial nights with men who were now quite ready to give the firm of Daniel Dyce their business, seeing they had Colin Cleland all to themselves and under observation. Trust estates and factorages from all quarters of the county came now to the office at the windy corner. A Christian lawyer with a sense of fun, unspotted by the world, and yet with a name for winning causes, was what the shire had long been wanting. And Daniel Dyce grew rich. “I’m making money so fast,” he said one day to his sisters (it was before Bud came), “that I wonder often what poor souls are suffering for it.”
Said Bell, “It’s a burden that’s easy put up with. We’ll be able now to get a new pair of curtains for the back bedroom.”
“A pair of curtains!” said her brother, with a smile to Ailie. “Ay, a score of pairs if they’re needed, even if the vogue was Valenciennes. Your notion of wealth, Bell, is Old Malabar’s – ‘Twopence more, and up goes the cuddy!’ Woman, I’m fair rolling in wealth.”
He said it with a kind of exultation that brought to her face a look of fear and disapproval. “Don’t, Dan, don’t,” she cried – “don’t brag of the world’s dross; it’s not like you. ‘He that hasteth to be rich, shall not be innocent,’ says the Proverbs. You must be needing medicine. We should have humble hearts. How many that were high have had a fall!”
“Are you frightened God will hear me and rue His bounty?” said the brother in a whisper. “I’m not bragging; I’m just telling you.”
“I hope you’re not hoarding it,” proceeded Miss Bell. “It’s not wise-like – ”
“Nor Dyce-like either,” said Miss Ailie.
“There’s many a poor body in the town this winter that’s needful.”
“I daresay,” said Daniel Dyce coldly. “The poor we have always with us. The thing, they tell me, is decreed by Providence.”
“But Providence is not aye looking,” said Bell. “If that’s what you’re frightened for, I’ll be your almoner.”
“It’s their own blame, you may be sure, if they’re poor. Improvidence and – and drink. I’ll warrant they have their glass of ale every Saturday. What’s ale? Is there any moral elevation in it? Its nutritive quality, I believe, is less than the tenth part of a penny bap.”
“Oh, but the poor creatures!” sighed Miss Bell.
“Possibly,” said Dan Dyce, “but every man must look after himself; and as you say, many a man well off has come down in the world. We should take no risks. I had Black the baker at me yesterday for £20 in loan to tide over some trouble with his flour merchant and pay an account to Miss Minto.”
“A decent man, with a wife and seven children,” said Miss Bell.
“Decent or not, he’ll not be coming back borrowing from me in a hurry. I set him off with a flea in his lug.”
“We’re not needing curtains,” said Miss Bell hurriedly; “the pair we have are fine.”
Dan finished his breakfast that day with a smile, flicked the crumbs off his waistcoat, gave one uneasy glance at Ailie, and went off to business humming “There is a Happy Land.”
“Oh, dear me, I’m afraid he’s growing a perfect miser,” moaned Bell when she heard the door close behind him. “He did not use to be like that when he was younger and poorer. Money’s like the toothache, a commanding thing.”
Ailie smiled. “If you went about as much as I do, Bell,” she said, “you would not be misled by Dan’s pretences. And as for Black the baker, I saw his wife in Miss Minto’s yesterday buying boots for her children and a bonnet for herself. She called me Miss Ailie, an honour I never got from her in all my life before.”
“Do you think – do you think he gave Black the money?” said Bell in a pleasant excitation.
“Of course he did. It’s Dan’s way to give it to some folk with a pretence of reluctance, for if he did not growl they would never be off his face! He’s telling us about the lecture that accompanied it as a solace to our femininity. Women, you know, are very bad lenders, and dislike the practice in their husbands and brothers.”
“None of the women I know,” protested Bell. “They’re just as free-handed as the men if they had it. I hope,” she added anxiously, “that Dan got good security. Would it be a dear bonnet, now, that she was getting?”
Ailie laughed, – a ridiculous sort of sister this; she only laughed.
Six times each lawful day Daniel Dyce went up and down the street between his house and the office at the windy corner opposite the Cross, the business day being divided by an interval of four hours to suit the mails. The town folk liked to see him passing; he gave the street an air of occupation and gaiety, as if a trip had just come in with a brass band banging at the latest air. Going or coming, he was apt to be humming a tune to himself as he went along with his hands in his outside pockets, and it was an unusual day when he did not stop to look in at a shop window or two on the way, though they never changed a feature once a-month. To the shops he honoured thus it was almost as good as a big turnover. Before him his dog went whirling and barking, a long alarm for the clerks to stop their game of Catch-the-Ten and dip their pens. There were few that passed him without some words of recognition.
He was coming down from the office on the afternoon of the Han’sel Monday that started Bud in the Pigeons’ Seminary when he met the nurse, old Betty Baxter, with a basket. She put it down at her feet, and bobbed a curtsey, a thing that nowadays you rarely see in Scotland.
“Tuts! woman,” he said to her, lifting the basket and putting it in her hand. “Why need you bother with the like of that? You and your curtseys! They’re out of date, Miss Baxter, out of date, like the decent men that deserved them long ago before my time.”
“No, they’re not out of date, Mr Dyce,” said she; “I’ll aye be minding you about my mother; you’ll be paid back some day.”
“Tuts!” said he again, impatient. “You’re an awful blether: how’s your patient, Duncan Gill?”
“As dour as the devil, sir,” said the nurse. “Still hanging on.”
“Poor man! poor man!” said Mr Dyce. “He’ll just have to put his trust in God.”
“Oh, he’s no’ so far through as all that,” said Betty Baxter. “He can still sit up and take his drop of porridge. They’re telling me you have got a wonderful niece, Mr Dyce, all the way from America. What a mercy for her! But I have not set eyes on her yet. I’m so busy that I could not stand in the close like the others, watching: what is she like?”
“Just like Jean Macrae,” said Mr Dyce, preparing to move on.
“And what was Jean Macrae like?”
“Oh, just like other folk,” said Mr Dyce, and passed on chuckling, to run almost into the arms of Captain Consequence.
“Have you heard the latest?” said Captain Consequence, putting his kid-gloved hand on the shoulder of the lawyer, who felt it like a lump of ice, for he did not greatly like the man, the smell of whose cigars, he said, before he knew they came from the Pilgrim Widow’s, proved that he rose from the ranks.
“No, Captain Brodie,” he said coldly. “Who’s the rogue or the fool this time?” but the Captain was too stupid to perceive it. He stared perplexedly.
“I hear,” said he, “the Doctor’s in a difficulty.”
“Is he, is he?” said Mr Dyce. “That’s a chance for his friends to stand by him.”
“Let him take it!” said Captain Consequence, puffing. “Did he not say to me once yonder, ‘God knows how you’re living.’”
“It must be God alone, for all the rest of us are wondering,” said Mr Dyce, and left the man to put it in his pipe and smoke it.
