"I HEARD all about you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan from pop--from
father," said Bud, as they walked back to the house. She had learned
already from example how sweeter sounded "father" than the term she had
used in America. "He was mighty apt to sit up nights talking about you
all. But I don't quite place Kate: he never mentioned Kate."
"Oh, she's a new addition," explained Ailie. "Kate is the maid, you
know: she came to us long after your father left home, but she's been
with us five years now, and that's long enough to make her one of the
family."
"My! Five years! She ain't--she isn't much of a quitter, is she? I
guess you must have tacked her down," said Bud. "You don't get helps in
Chicago to linger round the dear old spot like that; they get all hot
running from base to base, same as if it was a game of ball. But she's a
pretty--pretty broad girl, isn't she? She couldn't run very fast;
that'll be the way she stays."
Ailie smiled. "Ah! So that's Chicago, too, is it? You must have been
in the parlour a good many times at five-o'clock tea to have grasped the
situation at your age. I suppose your Chicago ladies lower the
temperature of their tea weeping into it the woes they have about their
domestics? It's another Anglo-Saxon link."
"Mrs Jim said sensible girls that would stay long enough to cool down
after the last dash were getting that scarce you had to go out after them
with a gun. You didn't really, you know; that was just Mrs Jim's way of
putting it."
"I understand," said Alison, unable to hide her amusement. "You seem to
have picked up that way of putting it yourself."
"Am I speaking slang?" asked the child, glancing up quickly and
reddening. "Father pro--prosisted I wasn't to speak slang nor chew gum;
he said it was things no real lady would do in the old country, and that
I was to be a well-off English undefied. You must be dre'ffle shocked,
Auntie Ailie?"
"Oh no," said Ailie cheerfully; "I never was shocked in all my life,
though they say I'm a shocker myself. I'm only surprised a little at the
possibilities of the English language. I've hardly heard you use a word
of slang yet, and still you scarcely speak a sentence in which there's
not some novelty. It's like Kate's first attempt at sheep's-head broth:
we were familiar with all the ingredients except the horns, and we knew
them elsewhere."
"That's all right, then," said Bud, relieved. "But Mrs Jim had funny
ways of putting things, and I s'pose I picked them up. I can't help
it--I pick up so fast. Why, I had scarletina twice! and I picked up her
way of zaggerating: often I zaggerate dre'ffle, and say I wrote all the
works of Shakespeare, when I really didn't, you know. Mrs Jim didn't
mean that she had to go out hunting for helps with a gun; all she meant
was that they were getting harder and harder to get, and mighty hard to
keep when you got them."