The Daft Days. Munro Neil

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