The Daft Days. Munro Neil

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