Neil Munro

“ Fortunately Kate’s marriage came to distract them for a while from the thought of Bud’s future. The essential house had been found that was suitable for a captain, yet not too dearly rented,—a piece of luck in a community where dwellings are rarely vacant, and every tenant over eighty years of age has the uneasy consciousness that half a dozen pairs betrothed have already decided upon a different colour of paint for his windows, and have become resigned, with a not unpleasing melancholy, to the thought that in the course of nature his time cannot be long. ”

“ In the morning Miss Bell had no sooner gone up to the making of beds, that was her Sabbath care to save the servant-maid from too much sin, and Ailie to her weekly reading with the invalid Duncan Gill, than Bud flew into the kitchen to make Kate ready for her tryst. Never in this world were breakfast dishes sooner cleaned and dried than by that eager pair: no sooner were they done than Kate had her chest-lid up and had dived, head foremost, among her Sunday finery. ”

“ But the Dyces never really knew how great and serious was the charge bequeathed to them in their brother William’s daughter till they saw it all one night in March in the light of a dozen penny candles.
Lennox had come from a world that’s lit by electricity, and for weeks she was sustained in wonder and amusement by the paraffin lamps of Daniel Dyce’s dwelling. They were, she was sure, the oldest kind of light in all the world, Aladdin-lights that gleamed of old on caverns of gems, till Kate on this particular evening came into the kitchen with the week-end groceries. ”

“ It is another mercy, too, that in our age we learn to make the best of what aforetime might be ill to thole, as Bell made fine new garments out of old ones faded by turning them outside in and adding frills and flounces. Bud’s absence early ceased to be deplorable, since it wakened cheerful expectations not to be experienced had she stayed at home; gave rise to countless fond contrivances for her happiness in exile; and two or three times a-year to periods of bliss, when her vacations gave the house of Dyce the very flower of ecstasy. ”

“ Before one marries it’s hunkydory—it’s fairy all the time; but after that it’s the same old face at breakfast, Mr Cleland says, and simply putting up with one another. Oh, love’s a wonderful thing, Charles; it’s the Great Thing, but sometimes I say ‘Give me Uncle Dan!’ Promise you’ll not go marrying Kate right off.”
The sailor roared with laughter. “Lord!” said he, “if I wait too long I’ll be wanting to marry yourself, for you’re a dangerous gyurl.”
“But I’m never going to marry,” said Bud. “I want to go right on loving everybody, and don’t yearn for any particular man tagging on to me.” ”

“ I hope that no matter how often or how early we rap at the brass knocker, or how timidly, Kate will come, and in one breath say, “What is’t? Come in!” We may hear, when we’re in, people passing in the street, and the wild geese call,—wild geese, wild geese! this time I will not follow where you tempt to where are only silence and dream,—the autumn and the summer days may cry us out to garden and wood, but if I can manage it I will lock the door on the inside, and shut us snugly in with Daniel Dyce and his household, and it will be well with us then. ”

“ Look at Captain Consequence; never the same since he was aboard—mulligatawny even-on in India; a score of servant-men, and never a hand’s-turn for himself,—all the blossom from that kind of Indian cress is on his nose.”
“Lands sake! I am glad I’m not dead,” said Bud, with all her body tingling as she heard the bees buzz in the nasturtium bells and watched the droll dog Footles snap at the butterflies.
“It’s not a bad world, one way and the other,” said Miss Bell, knitting at her side; “it would have been a hantle worse if we had had the making o’t. ”

“ And Wanton Wully, when he was not bell-ringing or cleaning the streets, or lounging on the quay to keep tally of ships that never came, being at ports more propinque to the highways of the world, where folks are making fortunes and losing much innocent diversion, wrought—as he would call it—in the Dyce’s garden. Not a great gardener, admittedly, for to be great in versatility is of necessity to miss perfection in anything, so that the lowest wages in the markets of the world are for the handy man. ”

“ The bride blubbered and threw her apron over her head as usual: Bud was in despair.
“Well, you are a silly!” she exclaimed. “All you want is a gentle tear or two trickling down the side of your nose, enough to make your eyes blink but not enough to soak your veil or leave streaks. And there you gush like a waterspout, and damp your face so much the bridegroom’ll catch his death of cold when he kisses you! Stop it, Kate MacNeill,—it isn’t anybody’s funeral: why, weddings aren’t so very fatal; lots of folk get over them—leastways in America.”
“I can’t help it!” protested the weeping maid. ”

“ To sleep well and eat anything, fear the face of nobody in bashfulness, to like dancing, and be able to sing a good bass or tenor,—that’s no bad beginning in the art of life. There’s a fellow Brodie yonder in the kirk choir who seems to me happier than a king when he’s getting in a fine boom-boom of bass to the tune Devizes; he puts me all out at my devotions on a Lord’s day with envy of his accomplishment.”
“What! envy too!” said Alison. “Murder, theft, and envy—what a brother!”
“Yes, envy too, the commonest and ugliest of our sins,” said Mr Dyce. ”

“ It lay, the little place, for most of the night in darkness: a mirk so measureless deep, when the shops were shut, that the red-lit skylight windows at the upper end of the town seemed by some miracle to lift themselves and soar into the heavens—square, monstrous flitting stars to the vision of Bud, as she stood with Auntie Ailie at the door watching for Uncle Dan’s return from his office. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I love a jovial heart like Dan’s, but to make the body just a kind of fiddle! It’s only in the body we can be ourselves—it is our only home; think of furnishing it with shams, and lighting every room that should be private, and leaving up the blinds that the world may look in at a penny a-head! How often have I thought of William, weeping for a living, as he had to do sometimes, no doubt, and wondered what was left for him to do to ease his grief when Mary died. Oh, curb the child, Ailie! curb the dear wee lassie,—it’s you it all depends on; she worships you ”

“ No longer blate young lads scraped with their feet uneasily in the sawdust of P. & A MacGlashan’s, swithering between the genteel attractions of Turkish Delight and the eloquence of conversation lozenges, that saved a lot of thinking, and made the blatest equal with the boldest when it came to tender badinage below the lamp at the back-door close with Dyce’s maid. Talk about the repartee of salons! wit moves deliberately there compared with the swift giff-gaff that Kate and her lads were used to maintain with sentiments doubly sweet and ready-made at threepence the quarter-pound. ”

“ The knowledge that ’tis an uncertain world, a place of change and partings, comes to us all sooner or later in one flash of apprehension and of grief: for the first time Bud felt the irrevocable nature of the past, and that her happy world under this roof was, someway, crumbling, and the tears came to her eyes.
A hurried footstep sounded on the stairs, a rap came to her door, and the bride came in, unbid, in the darkness, whispering Lennox’s name. ”

“ But Kate, too, had her dreams—of some misty lad of the mind, with short, curled hair, clothes brass-buttoned, and a delicious smell of tar—something or other on a yacht. The name she had endowed him with was Charles. She made him up from passing visions of seamen on the quays, and of notions gleaned from her reading of penny novelettes.
One week-night Bud came on her in the kitchen dressed in her Sunday clothes and struggling with a spluttering pen.
“Are you at your lessons too?” said the child. “You naughty Kate! there’s a horrid blot. No lady makes blots.” ”

“ Bud, snug in her auntie’s blankets, only her nose and her bright bead eyes showing in the light of the twirly wooden candlestick, guessed Mrs Molyneux was the quickest woman to get through work ever she saw: why she just waved it to one side and went out to shop or lunch with Jim.
A look of pity for Mrs Molyneux, the misguided, would come to Bell’s face, but for those folk in America she never had a word of criticism in the presence of the child. All she could say was America was different. America was not Scotland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The child’s a genius, Bell, and to a person of her temperament the thing that’s easily done is apt to be contemptuous: the glory’s in the triumph over difficulties, in getting on—getting on—getting on,” and Ailie’s face grew warm with some internal fire.
At that speech Bell was silent. She thought it just another of Ailie’s haiverings; but Mr Dyce, who heard, suddenly became grave. ”

“ Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever, though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that. Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think herself anything out of the ordinary. Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common enough with Young America. ”

“ The world is coming for Lennox Dyce, the greedy world, youth’s first and worst beguiler, that promises so much, but at the best has only bubbles to give, which borrow a moment the splendour of the sun, then burst in the hands that grasp them; the world that will have only our bravest and most clever bairns, and takes them all from us one by one. ”

“ For a space she dwelt on themes of rather antique patriotism that made her audience smile, for in truth in this burgh town we see no difference between Scotch and English: in our calculations there are only the lucky folk, born, bred, and dwelling within the sound of Will Oliver’s bell, and the poor souls who have to live elsewhere, all equally unfortunate, whether they be English, Irish, or Scots. ”

“ Even herself, who had been at the making of most of them the day before, and had, by God’s grace, still much of a child’s appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at this air of a celestial grocery—of plum-puddings and currant-buns, apples and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly sweet we call Black Man,—her face lit rosily by the candle lowe, a woman small and soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a briskness of body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years. ”