Complete Works. Anna Buchan
Christie should be friends seemed a most improbable thing. They were both ministers' daughters, but there any likeness ended. It seemed as if there could be nothing in common between this tall golden Elizabeth with her impulsive ways, her rapid heedless speech, her passion for poetry, her faculty for making new friends at every turn, and Christina, short, dark, and neat, with a mind as well-ordered as her raiment, suspicious of strangers and chilling with her nearest—and yet a very true friendship did exist.
"How is your mother?" asked Elizabeth.
"Mother's wonderful. Father has been in the house three days with lumbago. Jeanie has a cold too. I think it's the damp weather. This is my month of housekeeping. I wish, Elizabeth, you would tell me some new puddings. Archie says ours are so dull."
Elizabeth immediately threw herself into the subject of puddings.
"I know one new pudding, but it takes two days to make and it's very expensive. We only have it for special people. You know 'Aunt Mag,' of course? and 'Uncle Tom'? That's only 'Aunt Mag' with treacle. Semolina, sago, big rice—we call those milk things, we don't dignify them by the name of pudding. What else is there? Tarts, oh! and bread puddings, and there's that greasy kind you eat with syrup, suet dumplings. A man in the church was very ill, and the doctor said he hadn't any coating or lining or something inside him, because his wife hadn't given him any suet dumplings."
"Oh, Elizabeth!"
"A fact, I assure you," said Elizabeth. "We always have a suet dumpling once a week because of that. I'm afraid I'm not being very helpful, Kirsty. Do let's think of something quite new, only it's almost sure not to be good. That is so discouraging about the dishes one invents.... Apart from puddings, how is Archie?"
"Oh, he's quite well, and doing very well in business. He has Father's good business head."
"Yes," said Elizabeth. She did not admire anything about the Rev. Johnston Christie, least of all his business head. He was a large pompous man, with a booming voice and a hearty manner, and he had what is known in clerical circles as a "suburban charge." Every Sunday the well-dressed, well-fed congregation culled from villadom to which he ministered filled the handsome new church, and Mr. Christie's heart grew large within him as he looked at it. He was a poor preacher but an excellent organiser: he ran a church as he would have run a grocery establishment. His son Archie was exactly like him, but Christina had something of her mother, a deprecating little woman with feeble health and a sense of humour whom Elizabeth called Chuchundra after the musk-rat in the Jungle Book that could never summon up courage to run into the middle of the room.
"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I foresee a brilliant future for Archie, full of money and motor-cars and knighthoods."
"Oh! I don't know," said Christina, "but I think he has the knack of making money. How are your brothers?"
"Both well, I'm glad to say. Walter has got a new job—in the Secretariat—and finds it vastly entertaining. Alan seems keener about polo than anything else, but he's only a boy after all."
"You talk as if you were fifty at least."
"I'm getting on," said Elizabeth. "Twenty-eight is a fairly ripe age, don't you think?"
"No, I don't," said Christina somewhat shortly. Christina was thirty-five.
"Buff asked me yesterday if I remembered Mary Queen of Scots," went on Elizabeth, "and he alluded to me in conversation with Thomas as 'my elderly nasty sister.'"
"Cheeky little thing!" said Christina. "You spoil that child."
Elizabeth laughed, and by way of turning the conversation asked Christina's advice as to what would sell best at coming bazaars. At all bazaar work Christina was an expert, and she had so many valuable hints to give that long before she had come to an end of them Elizabeth was hauled away to play "Yellow Dog Dingo."
Christina had little liking for children, and it was with unconcealed horror that she watched her friend bounding from Little God Nqu (Billy) to Middle God Nquing (Buff), then to Big God Nquong (Thomas), begging to be made different from all other animals, and wonderfully popular by five o'clock in the afternoon.
It was rather an exhausting game and necessitated much shouting and rushing up and down stairs, and after everyone had had a chance of playing in the title rôle, Elizabeth sank breathless, flushed and dishevelled, into a chair.
"Well, I must say——" said Christina.
"Come on again," shouted Billy, while Thomas and Buff loped up and down the room.
"No—no," panted Elizabeth, "you're far too hot as it is. What will 'Mamma' say if you go home looking like Red Indians?"
Mr. Seton, quite undisturbed by the noise, had been engrossed in the poetry book, but now he laid it down and looked at his watch.
"I must be going," he said.
But the three boys threw themselves on him—"A bit of Willy Wud; just a little bit of Willy Wud," they pleaded.
James Seton was an inspired teller of tales, and Willy Wud was one of his creations. His adventures—and surely no one ever had stranger and more varied adventures—made a sort of serial story for "after tea" on winter evenings.
"Where did we leave him?" he asked, sitting down obediently.
"Don't you remember, Father?" said Buff. "In the Robbers' Cave."
"He was just untying that girl," said Thomas.
"She wasn't a girl," corrected Billy, "she was a princess."
"It's the same thing," said Thomas. "He was untying her when he found the Robber Chief looking at him with a knife in his mouth."
So the story began and ended all too soon for the eager listeners, and Mr. Seton hurried away to his work.
"Say good-night, Thomas and Billy," said Elizabeth, "and run home. It's very nearly bed-time."
"To-morrow's Saturday," said Thomas suggestively.
"So it is. Ask 'Mamma' if you may come to tea, and come over directly you have had dinner."
Thomas looked dissatisfied.
"Couldn't I say to Mamma you would like us to come to dinner? Then we could come just after breakfast. You see, there's that house we're building——"
"I'm going to buy nails with my Saturday penny," said Billy.
"By all means come to dinner," said Elizabeth, "if Mamma doesn't mind. Good-night, sonnies—now run."
She opened the front-door for them, and watched them scud across the road to their own gate—then she went back to the drawing-room.
"I must be going too," said Miss Christie, sitting back more comfortably in her chair.
"It's Band of Hope night," said Elizabeth.
Buff had been marching up and down the room, with Launcelot in his arms, telling himself a story, but he now came and leant against his sister. She stroked his hair as she asked, "What's the matter, Buffy boy?"
"I wish," said Buff, "that I lived in a house where people didn't go to meetings."
"But I'm not going out till you're in bed. We shall have time for reading and everything. Say good-night to Christina, and see if Ellen has got your bath ready. And, Buff," she said, as he went out of the door, "pay particular attention to your knees—scrub them with a brush; and don't forget your fair large ears, my gentle joy."
"Those boys are curiosities," said Miss Christie. "What house is this they're building?"
"It's a Shelter for Homeless Cats," said Elizabeth, "made of orange boxes begged from the grocer. I think it was Buff's idea to start with, but Thomas has the clever hands. Must you go?"
"These chairs are too comfortable," said Miss Christie, as she rose; "they make one lazy. If I were you, Elizabeth, I wouldn't let Buff talk to himself and tell himself stories. He'll grow up queer.... You needn't laugh."
"I'm