The Daft Days. Munro Neil

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.

      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