The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
at a charity concert. "I heard you sing while staying with my sister, Mrs. M'Cubbins, whom you know, and I will be pleased if you can stay the night——" so ran the letter. "Pleased if I stay the night!" thought Elizabeth wrathfully. "I should just think I would if I went—which I won't, of course. Mrs. M'Cubbins' sister! That explains the impertinence." And she wrote a chill note regretting that she could not give herself the pleasure. An invitation to dinner was declined because it was for "Prayer-meeting night." Then she took up a long letter, much underlined, which she read through carefully before she began to write.
"Most kind of Aunts.—How can I possibly go to Switzerland with you this Christmas? Have I not a father? also a younger brother? It's not because I don't want to go—you know how I would love it; but picture to yourself Father and Buff spending their Christmas alone! Would you not come to us? I propose it with diffidence, for I know you think in Glasgow dwelleth no good thing; but won't you try it? You know you have never given it a chance. A few hours on your way to the North is all you ever give us, and Glasgow can't be judged in an hour or two—nor its people either. I don't say that it would be in the least amusing for you, but it would be great fun for us, and you ought to try to be altruistic, dearest of aunts. You know quite well that Mr. Arthur Townshend will be quite all right without you for a little. He has probably lots of invitations for Christmas, being such a popular young man and——"
The opening of the gate and the sound of footsteps on the gravel made Elizabeth run to the window.
"Buff—carrying his coat and the rain pouring! Of all the abandoned youths!"
Buff dashed into the house, threw his overcoat into one corner, his cap into another, and violently assaulted the study door, kicking it when it failed to open at the first attempt.
"Boy, what are you about?" asked his father, as Buff fell on his knees before the chair on which lay, comfortably asleep, the little rescued kitten.
CHAPTER IV
"Sir Toby Belch. Does not our life consist of four elements?
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking."
Twelfth Night.
"Poo-or pussy!" murmured Buff, laying his head beside his treasure on the cushion.
"Get up, boy," said Mr. Seton. "You carry kindness to animals too far."
"And he doesn't carry tidiness any way at all," said Elizabeth, who had followed Buff into the study. "He has strewed his garments all over the place in the most shocking way. Come along, Buff, and pick them up.... Father, tell him to come."
"Do as your sister says, Buff."
But Buff clung limpet-like to the chair and expostulated. "What's the good of putting things tidy when I'm putting them on again in a minute?"
"There's something in that," Mr. Seton said, as he put back in the shelves the books he had been using.
"All I have to say," said Elizabeth, "is that if I had been brought up in this lax way I wouldn't be the example of sweetness and light I am now. Do as you are told, Buff. I hear Ellen bringing up luncheon."
Buff stowed the kitten under his arm and stood up. "I'll pick them up," he said in a dignified way, "if Launcelot can have his dinner with me."
"Who?" asked Elizabeth.
"This is him," Buff explained, looking down at the distraught face of the kitten peeping from under his arm.
"What made you call it Launcelot?" asked Elizabeth, as her father went out of the room laughing.
"Thomas said to call him Topsy, and Billy said Bull's Eye was a nice name, but I thought he looked more like a Launcelot."
"Well—I'll take it while you pick up your coat and run and wash your hands. You'll be late if you don't hurry."
"Aw! no sausages!" said Buff, five minutes later, as he wriggled into his place at the luncheon-table.
"Can't have sausages every day, sonny," said his sister; "the butcher man would get tired making them for us."
"Aren't there any sausage-mines?" asked Buff; but his father and sister had begun to talk to each other, so his question remained unanswered.
Unless spoken to, Buff seldom offered a remark, but talked rapidly to himself in muffled tones, to the great bewilderment of strangers, who were apt to think him slightly deranged.
Ellen had brought in the pudding when Elizabeth noticed that her young brother was sitting with a tense face, his hands clenched in front of him and his legs moving rapidly.
She touched his arm to recall him to his surroundings. "Don't touch me," he said through his teeth. "I'm a motor and I've lost control of myself."
He emitted a shrill "Honk Honk," to the delight of his father, who inquired if he were the car or the chauffeur.
"I'm both," said Buff, his legs moving even more rapidly. Ellen, unmoved by such peculiar table-manners, put his plate of pudding before him, and Buff, hearing Elizabeth remark that Thomas and Billy were in all probability even now on their way to school, fell to, said his grace, was helped into his coat, and left the house in almost less time than it takes to tell.
Mr. Seton and Elizabeth were drinking their coffee when Elizabeth said:
"I heard from Aunt Alice this morning."
"Yes? How is she?"
"Very well, I think. She wants me to go with her to Switzerland in December. Of course I've said I can't go."
"Of course," said Mr. Seton placidly.
Elizabeth pushed away her cup.
"Father, I don't mind being noble, but I must say I do hate to have my nobility taken for granted."
"My dear girl! Nobility——"
"Well," said Elizabeth, "isn't it pretty noble to give up Switzerland and go on plodding here? Just look at the rain, and I must go away down to the district and collect for Women's Foreign Missions. There are more amusing pastimes than toiling up flights of stairs and wresting shillings for the heathen from people who can't afford to give. I can hardly bear to take it."
"My dear, would you deny them the privilege?"
It might almost be said that Elizabeth snorted.
"Privilege! Oh, well... If anyone else had said that, but you're a saint, Father, and I believe you honestly think it is a privilege to give. You must, for if it weren't for me I doubt if you would leave yourself anything to live on, but—oh! it's no use arguing. Where are you visiting this afternoon?"
"I really ought to go to Dennistoun to see that poor body, Mrs. Morrison."
"It's such a long way in the rain. Couldn't you wait for a better day?"
James Seton rose from the table and looked at the dismal dripping day, then he smiled down at his daughter. "After twenty years in Glasgow I'm about weather-proof, Lizbeth. If I don't go to-day I can't go till Saturday, and I'm just afraid she may be needing help. I'll see one or two other sick people on my way home."
Elizabeth protested no more, but followed her father into the hall and helped him with his coat, brushed his hat, and ran upstairs for a clean handkerchief for his overcoat pocket.
As they stood together there was a striking resemblance between father and daughter. They had the same tall slim figure and beautifully set head, the same broad brow and humorous mouth. But whereas Elizabeth's eyes were grey, and faced the world mocking and inscrutable, her father's were the blue hopeful eyes of a boy. Sorrow and loss had brought to James Seton's table their "full cup of tears," and the drinking of that cup had bent his shoulders and whitened his hair, but it had not touched his expression