Bud. Munro Neil

of all to rise in Dyce's house, after the mistress and the maid, was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.

      And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back he was known as Cheery Dan.

      “Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the water. It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which men never age, comes from high mountain bens.

      “That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers. “I'll see ye far enough first!” And contented himself with a slighter wash than usual, and shaving. As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was

      “' Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,'”

      with not much tone but a great conviction—a tall, lean, clean-shaven man of over fifty, with a fine, long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen, gray eyes, and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands into them. And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he went up-stairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a pencilled note, in which he wrote:

      “A New Year's Day Present for a Good Boy, from an Uncle who does not like Cats.”

      He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was seen the King's highway. “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself. “They have made an extraordinary job of it. Very nice, indeed, but just a shade ladylike. A stirring boy would prefer fewer fallals.” There was little, indeed, to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover's-knots, its bower-like bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of potpourri and lavender. A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when she was in Miss Mushet's seminary, hung over the mantel-piece enjoining all beholders to

      “Watch and Pray”

      Mr. Dyce put both hands into his trousers-pockets, bent a little, and heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter. “Man's whole duty, according to Bell Dyce,” he said, “'Watch and Pray'; but they do not need to have the lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I'll warrant. Yon's the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the prayer. 'Watch and Pray'—h'm! It should be Watch or Pray—it clearly cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time.”

      He was humming “Star of Peace”—for the tune he started the morning with usually lasted him all day—and standing in the middle of the floor contemplating with amusement the lady-like adornment of the room prepared for his Chicago nephew, when a light step fell on the attic stairs, and a woman's voice cried: “Dan! Dan Dyce! Coo-ee!”

      He did not answer.

      She cried again after coming up a step or two more, but still he did not answer. He slid behind one of the bed-curtains.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      ALISON DYCE came lightly up the rest of the stair, whistling blithely, in spite of her sister Bell's old notion that whistling women and crowing hens are never canny. She swept into the room. People in the town—which has a forest of wood and deer behind it—used to say she had the tread and carriage of a young wild roe, and I can well assure you she was the girl to walk with on a winter day! She had in her hand a book of poems called The Golden Treasury and a spray of the herb called Honesty, that thrives in poor men's gardens. Having laid them down on the table without noticing her brother's extraordinary Present for a Good Boy, she turned about and fondled things. She smoothed the bedclothes as if they covered a child, she patted the chair-backs with an air of benediction, she took cushions to her breast like one that cuddled them, and when she touched the mantelpiece ornaments they could not help it but must start to chime. It was always a joy to see Alison Dyce redding-up, as we say, though in housewifery, like sewing, knitting, and cooking, she was only a poor second to her sister Bell. She tried, from duty, to like these occupations, but oh, dear! the task was beyond her: whatever she had learned from her schooling in Edinburgh and Brussels, it was not the darning of hose and the covering of rhubarb-tarts.

      Her gift, said Bell, was management.

      Tripping round the little attic, she came back by-and-by to the table at the window to take one last wee glimpse inside The Golden Treasury, that was her own delight and her notion of happy half-hours for the ideal boy, and her eye fell for the first time on the pea-sling and the note beside it.

      She read, and laughed, and upon my word, if laughter like Ailie Dyce's could be bought in perforated rolls, there would be no demand for Chopin and Schumann on the pianolas. It was a laugh that even her brother could not resist: a paroxysm of coughing burst from behind the curtains, and he came out beside her chuckling.

      “I reckoned without my hoast,” said he, gasping.

      “I was sure you were up-stairs,” said Alison. “You silly man! Upon my word! Where's your dignity, Mr. Dyce?”

      Dan Dyce stood for a second a little bit abashed, rubbing his chin and blinking his eyes as if their fun was a thing to be kept from brimming over. “I'm a great wag!” said he. “If it's dignity you're after, just look at my velvet coat!” and so saying he caught the ends of his coat skirts with his fingers, held them out at arm's-length, and turned round as he might do at a fit-on in his tailor's, laughing till his hoast came on again. “Dignity, quo' she, just look at my velvet coat!”

      “Dan! Dan! will you never be wise?” said Ailie Dyce, a humorsome demoiselle herself, if you believe me.

      “Not if I keep my health,” said he. “You have made a bonny-like show of the old garret, between the two of you. It's as smart as a lass at her first ball.”

      “I think it's very nice; at least it might be worse,” interrupted Alison, defensively, glancing round with satisfaction and an eye to the hang of the frame round “Watch and Pray.” Bell's wool-work never agreed with her notions, but, as she knew that her tarts never agreed with Bell, she kept, on that point, aye discreetly dumb.

      “Poor little Chicago!” said her brother. “I'm vexed for the wee fellow. Print chintz, or chint prints, or whatever it is; sampler texts, and scent, and poetry books—what in the world is the boy to break?”

      “Oh, you have seen to that department, Dan!” said Ailie, taking the pea-sling again in her hand. “'A New Year's Day Present for a Good Boy from an Uncle who does not like Cats.' I declare that is a delightful way of making the child feel quite at home at once.”

      “Tuts! 'Tis just a diversion. I know it 'll cheer him wonderfully to find at the start that if there's no young folk in the house there's some of the eternal Prank. I suppose there are cats in Chicago. He cannot expect us to provide him with pigs, which are the usual domestic pets there, I believe. You let my pea-sling alone, Ailie; you'll find it will please him more than all the poetry and pink bows. I was once a boy myself, and I know.”

      “You were never anything else,” said Alison—“and never will be anything else. It is a pity to let the child see at the very start what an irresponsible person his uncle is; and, besides, it's cruel to throw stones at cats.”

      “Not at all, not at all!” said her brother, briskly, with his head quizzically to the side a little, in a way he had when debating in the court. “I have been throwing stones for twenty years at those cats of Rodger's that live