Bud. Munro Neil
contents of the post-card before she reached the parlor; its news dismayed her.
“Just imagine!” she cried. “Here's that bairn on his way from Liverpool his lee-lone, and not a body with him!''
“What! what!” cried Mr. Dyce, whose eyes had been shut to say the grace. “Isn't that actor-fellow, Molyneux, coming with him, as he promised?”
Miss Dyce sunk in a chair and burst into tears, crushing the post-card in her hand.
“What does he say?” demanded her brother.
“He says—he says—oh, dear me!—he says, 'Pip, pip!'” quoth the weeping sister.
CHAPTER III
I MISDOUBTED Mr. Molyneux from the very first,” said Ailie, turning as white as a clout. “From all his post-cards he was plainly too casual. Stop it, Bell, my dear—have sense; the child's in a Christian land, and in the care of somebody who is probably more dependable than this delightful Molyneux.”
Mr. Dyce took out an old, thick, silver verge. “Nine o'clock,” he said, with a glance at its creamy countenance. “Molyneux's consignment is making his first acquaintance with Scottish scenery and finding himself, I hope, amused at the Edinburgh accent. He'll arrive at Maryfield—poor, wee smout!—at three; if I drive over at twelve, I'll be in time to meet him. Tuts, Bell, give over; he's a ten-year-old and a Dyce at that—there's not the slightest fear of him.”
“Ten years old, and in a foreign country—if you can call Scotland a foreign country,” cried Miss Dyce, still sobbing with anger and grief. “Oh, the cat-witted scamp, that Molyneux—if I had him here!”
The dining-room door opened and let in a yawning dog of most plebeian aspect, longest lie-abed of the household, the clamor of the street, and the sound of sizzling bacon, followed by Kate's majestic form at a stately glide, because she had on her new stiff lilac print that was worn for breakfast only on Sundays and holidays. “You would think I was never coming,” she said, genially, and smiled widely as she put the tray on the sideboard. This that I show you, I fear, is a beggarly household, absurdly free from ceremony. Mr. Dyce looked at his sister Ailie and smiled; Ailie looked at her sister Bell and smiled. Bell took a hair-pin or two out of their places and seemed to stab herself with them viciously in the nape of the neck, and smiled not at all nor said anything, for she was furious with Molyneux, whom she could see in her mind's eye—an ugly, tippling, frowzy-looking person with badly polished boots, an impression that would have greatly amused Mrs. Molyneux, who, not without reason, counted her Jim the handsomest man and the best dressed in the profession in all Chicago.
“I'm long of coming, like Royal Charlie,” Kate proceeded, as she passed the ashets on to Miss Dyce; “but, oh me! New Year's Day here is no' like New Year's Day in the bonny isle of Colonsay.”
Mr. Dyce said grace and abstractedly helped himself alternately from both ends of a new roll of powdered butter. “Dan, dear, don't take the butter from both ends—it spoils the look,” said Bell. “Tuts!” said he. “What's the odds? There'll be no ends at all when we're done with it. I'm utterly regardless of the symmetrical and the beautiful this morning. I'm savage to think of that man Molyneux. If I was not a man of peace I would be wanting to wring Mr. Moly-neux's neck,” and he twisted his morning roll in halves with ferocious hands.
“Dan!” said Ailie, shocked. “I never heard you say anything so blood-thirsty in all my life before. I would never have thought it of you.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “There's many things about me you never suspected. You women are always under delusions about the men—about the men—well, dash it! about the men you like. I know myself so well that there is no sin, short of one or two not so accounted, that I cannot think myself capable of. I believe I might be forced into robbing a kirk if I had no money and was as hungry as I was this morning before that post-card came to ruin a remarkably fine New-Year's-Day appetite, or even into murdering a man like Molyneux who failed in the simplest duties no man should neglect.”
“I hope and trust,” said Bell, still nervous, “that he is a wiselike boy with a proper upbringing, who will not be frightened at travelling and make no mistakes about the train. If he was a Scotch laddie, with the fear of God in him, I would not be a bit put about for him, for he would be sure to be asking, asking, and if he felt frightened he would just start and eat something, like a Christian. But this poor child has no advantages—just American!”
Ailie sat back in her chair, with her teacup in her hand, and laughed, and Kate laughed quietly—though it beat her to see where the fun was; and the dog laughed likewise—at least it wagged its tail and twisted its body and made such extraordinary sounds in its throat that you could say it was laughing.
“Tuts! you are the droll woman, Bell,” said Mr. Dyce, blinking at her. “You have the daftest ideas of Some things. For a woman who spent so long a time in Miss Mushet's seminary, and reads so much at the newspapers, I wonder at you.”
“Of course his father was Scotch, that's one mercy,” added Bell, not a bit annoyed at the reception of her pious opinions.
“That, is always something to be going on with,” said Mr. Dyce, mockingly. “I hope he'll make the most of that great start in life and fortune. It's as good as money in his pocket.”
Bell put up a tiny hand and pushed a stray curl (for she had a rebel chevelure) behind her ear, and smiled in spite of her anxiety about the coming nephew. “You may laugh if you like, Dan,” she said, emphatically, perking with her head across the table at him, “but I'm proud, I'm proud, I'm PROUD I'm Scotch.” (“Not apologizing for it myself,” said her brother, softly.) “And you know what these Americans are! Useless bodies, who make their men brush their own boots, and have to pay wages that's a sin to housemaids, and eat pie even-on.”
“Dear me! is that true, or did you see it in a newspaper?” said her brother. “I begin to be alarmed myself at the possibilities of this small gentleman now on his way to the north, in the complete confidence of Mr. Molyneux, who must think him very clever. It's a land of infant prodigies he comes from; even at the age of ten he may have more of the stars and stripes in him than we can eradicate by a diet of porridge and a curriculum of Shorter Catechism and Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs. Faith, I was fond of Jane myself when I read her first: she was nice and bloody. A big soft hat with a bash in it, perhaps; a rhetorical delivery at the nose, 'I guess and calculate' every now and then; a habit of chewing tobacco” (“We'll need a cuspidor,” said Ailie, sotto voce); “and a revolver in his wee hip-pocket. Oh, the darling! I can see him quite plainly.”
“Mercy on us!” cried the maid, Kate, and fled the room all in a tremor at the idea of the revolver.
“You may say what you like, but I cannot get over his being an American,” said Bell, solemnly. “The dollar's everything in America, and they're so independent!”
“Terrible! terrible!” said her brother, ironically, breaking into another egg fiercely with his knife, as if he were decapitating the President of the United States.
Ailie laughed again. “Dear, dear Bell!” she said, “it sounds quite Scotch. A devotion to the dollar is a good sound basis for a Scotch character. Remember there are about a hundred bawbees in a dollar: just think of the dollar in bawbees, and you'll not be surprised that the Americans prize it so much.” “Renegade!” said Bell, shaking a spoon at her. “Provincial!” retorted Ailie, shaking a fork at Bell,
'"Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,
Bright the beams that shine on me.
—children, be quiet,” half-sung, half-said their brother. “Bell, you are a blether; Ailie, you are a cosmopolitan, a thing accursed. That's what Edinburgh and Brussels and your too