The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
Taylor looked coyly downwards, murmuring what sounded like "Aay-he"; then, with her left hand (her right hand being held by her lover-like husband), she seized Mrs. Thomson's hand and squeezed it. "I'll hear on Sabbath if ye're the worse of it," she said hopefully. "It's been real nice, but I sneezed twice in the bedroom, so I doubt I've got a tich of cold. But I'll go home and steam my head, and that'll mebbe take it in time."
"Yer cab has came," Annie, the servant, whispered hoarsely to Elizabeth.
"Thank you," said Elizabeth. Then a thought struck her: "Mrs. Taylor, won't you let me drive you both home? I pass your door. Do let me."
"I'm sure, Miss Seton, you're very kind," said Mrs. Taylor.
"Thoughtful, right enough," said her husband; and, amid a chorus of good nights, Elizabeth and the Taylors went out into the night.
Half an hour later the exhausted Thomson family sat in their dining-room. They had not been idle, for Mrs. Thomson believed in doing at once things that had to be done. Mr. Thomson and Robert had carried away the intruding chairs, and taken the "leaf" out of the table. Jessie had put all the left-over cakes into a tin box, and folded away the tablecloth and d'oyleys. Mrs. Thomson had herself carefully counted and arranged her best cups and saucers in their own cupboard, and was now busy counting the fruit knives and forks and teaspoons.
"Only twenty-three! Surely Annie's niver let a teaspoon go down the sink."
"Have a sangwich, Mamma," said her husband. "The spoon'll turn up."
Mrs. Thomson took a sandwich and sat down on a chair. "Well," she said slowly, "we've had them, and we'll not need to have them for a long time again."
"It's been a great success," said Mr. Thomson, taking a mouthful of lemonade. "Eh, Jessie?"
"It was very nice," said Jessie, "and as you say, Mamma, we'll not need to have another for a long time. Mr. Taylor's the limit," she added.
"He enjoyed himself," said her father.
"He's an awful man to eat," said Mrs. Thomson. "It's not the thing to make remarks about guests' appetites, I know, but he fair surpassed himself to-night. However, Mrs. Taylor, poor body, 's quite delighted with him."
"He sang well," said Mr. Thomson. "I never heard 'Miss Hooligan' better. Quite a lot of talent we had to-night, and Miss Seton's a treat. Nobody can sing like her, to my mind."
"That's true," said his wife. "Mr. Stevenson seems a nice young man, Jessie. What does he do?"
"He's an artist," said Jessie. "I met him at the Shakespeare Readings. Muriel Simpson thinks he's awfully good-looking."
"Muriel Simpson's not, anyway," said Alick. "She's a face like a scone, and it's all floury too, like a scone."
"Alick," said his father, "it's high time you were in bed, my boy. We'll be hearing about this in the morning. What about your lessons?"
"Lessons!" cried Alick shrilly. "How could I learn lessons and a party goin' on?"
"Quite true," said Mr. Thomson. "Well, it's only once in a while. Rubbert"—to his son who was standing up yawning—"you're no great society man."
Robert shook his head.
"I haven't much use for people at any time," he said, "but I fair hate them at a party."
And Mr. Thomson laughed in an understanding way as he went to lift in the mat and lock the front door, and make Jeanieville safe for the night.
CHAPTER III
"When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With a hey ho hey, the wind and the rain."
Twelfth Night.
The Reverend James Seton sat placidly eating his breakfast while his daughter Elizabeth wrestled in spirit with her young brother.
"No, Buff, you are not to tell yourself a story. You must sup your porridge."
Buff slapped his porridge vindictively with his spoon and said, "I wish all the millers were dead."
"Foolish fellow," said his father, as he took a bit of toast.
"Come away," said Elizabeth persuasively, scooping a hole in the despised porridge, "we'll make a quarry in the middle." She filled it up with milk. "There! We've made a great deep hole, big enough to drown an army. Now—one sup for the King, and one for the boys in India, and one for—for the partridge in the pear-tree, and one for the poor little starved pussy downstairs."
Buff twisted himself round to look at his sister's face.
"Yes, there is. Ellen found it last night at the kitchen door. If you finish your breakfast quickly, you may run down and see it before prayers."
"What's it like?" gurgled Buff, as the porridge slid in swift spoonfuls down his throat.
"Grey, with a black smudge on its nose and such a little tail."
"Set me down," said Buff, with the air of one who would behold a cherished vision.
Elizabeth untied his napkin, and in a moment they heard him clatter down the kitchen stairs.
Elizabeth met her father's eyes and smiled. "Funny Buff! Isn't it odd his passion for cats? Oh, Father, you haven't asked about the party."
Mr. Seton passed his cup to be filled.
"That is only my second, isn't it?" he asked, "Well, I hope you had a pleasant evening?"
Elizabeth wrinkled her brows as she filled her cup. "Pleasant? Warm, noisy, over-eaten, yes—but pleasant? And yet, do you know, it was pleasant because the Thomsons were so anxious to please. Dear Mrs. Thomson was so kind, stout and worried, and Mr. Thomson is such an anxious little pilgrim always; and Jessie was so smart, and Robert—what a nice boy that is!—so obviously hated us all, and Alick's accent was as refreshing as ever. We got the most tremendously fine supper—piles and piles of things, and everybody ate such a lot, especially Mr. Taylor—'keeping up the tabernacle' he called it. I was sorry for Jessie with that little man. It is hard to rise to gentility when you are weighted with parents who will stick to their old friends, and our church-people, though they are of such stuff as angels are made, don't look well on the outside. I know Jessie felt they spoiled the look of the party."
"Poor Jessie!" said Mr. Seton.
"Yes, poor Jessie! I never saw Mr. Taylor so jokesome. He called her a 'good wee miss,' and shamed her in the eyes of the Simpsons (you don't know them—stupid, vulgar people). And then he sang! Father, do you think 'Miss Hooligan' is a fit song for the superintendent of the Sabbath school to sing?"
Mr. Seton smiled indulgently.
"I don't think there's much wrong with 'Miss Hooligan,'" he said; "she's a very old friend."
"You mean she's respectable through very age? Perhaps to us, but I assure you the Simpsons were simply stunned last night at the first time of hearing."
Elizabeth poured some cream into her cup, then looked across at her father with her eyes dancing with laughter. "I laugh whenever I think of Mrs. Taylor," she explained—"ma spouse, as Mr. Taylor calls her. I don't think she has any mind really; her whole conversation is just a long tangle of symptoms, her own and other people's. What infinite interests she gets out of her neighbours' insides! And then the preciseness of her dates—'would it be Wensday? No, it was Tuesday—no, Wensday it must ha' been.'"
Her father chuckled appreciatively at Elizabeth's reproduction of Mrs. Taylor's voice and manner, but he felt constrained to remark: "Mrs. Taylor's an excellent woman, Elizabeth. You're a little too given to laughing at people."
"Oh, Father, if a minister's daughter can't laugh, what is the poor thing to do? But, seriously, I find myself becoming horribly minister's