THE orphan child of William and Mary Dyce, dead, the pair of them, in
the far-off city of Chicago, stepped, quite serenely, into an astounded
company. There were three Dyces in a row in front of her, and the droll
dog Footles at her feet, and behind her, Kate, the servant, wringing her
apron as if it had newly come from the washing-boyne, her bosom heaving.
Ten eyes (if you could count the dog's, hidden by his tousy fringe)
stared at the child a moment, and any ordinary child would have been
much put out; but this was no common child, or else she felt at once the
fond kind air of home. I will give you her picture in a sentence or
two. She was black-haired, dark and quick in the eye, not quite pale
but olive in complexion, with a chin she held well up, and a countenance
neither shy nor bold, but self-possessed. Fur on her neck and hood (Jim
Molyneux's last gift), and a muff that held her arms up to the elbows,
gave her an aspect of picture-book cosiness that put the maid in mind at
once of the butcher's Christmas calendar.
It was the dog that first got over the astonishment: he made a dive at
her with little friendly growls, and rolled on his back at her feet, to
paddle with his four paws in the air, which was his way of showing he
was in the key for fun.
With a cry of glee she threw the muff on the floor and plumped beside
him, put her arms about his body and buried her face in his fringe. His
tail went waving, joyous, like a banner. “Doggie, doggie, you love me,”
said she, in an accent that was anything but American. “Let us pause and
consider--you will not leave this house till I boil you an egg.”
“God bless me, what child's this?” cried Bell, coming to herself with a
start, and, pouncing on her, she lifted her to her feet. Ailie sank
on her hands and knees and stared in the visitor's face. “The kilt,
indeed!” said Mr. Dyce to himself. “This must be a warlock wean, for if
it has not got the voice and sentiment of Wanton Wully Oliver I'm losing
my wits.”
“Tell me this, quick, are you Lennox Dyce?” said Bell, all trembling,
devouring the little one with her eyes.
“Well, I just guess I am,” replied the child, calmly, with the dog
licking her chin. “Say, are you Auntie Bell?” and this time there was no
doubt about the American accent. Up went her mouth to them to be kissed,
composedly: they lost no time, but fell upon her, Ailie half in tears
because at once she saw below the childish hood so much of brother
William.
“Lennox, dear, you should not speak like that; who in all the world
taught you to speak like that?” said Bell, unwrapping her.
“Why, I thought that was all right here,” said the stranger. “That's the
way the bell-man speaks.”
“Bless me! Do you know the bell-man?” cried Miss Dyce.
“I rang his old bell for him this morning--didn't you hear me?” was the
surprising answer. “He's a nice man; he liked me. I'd like him too if he
wasn't so tired. He was too tired to speak sense; all he would say was,
'I've lost the place, let us pause and consider,' and 'Try another egg.'
I said I would give him a quarter if he'd let me ring his bell, and he
said he'd let me do it for nothing, and my breakfast besides. 'You'll
not leave this house till I boil an egg for you'--that's what he said,
and the poor man was so tired! And his legs were dreff'le poorly.” Again
her voice was the voice of Wully Oliver; the sentiment, as the Dyces
knew, was the slogan of his convivial hospitality.
“The kilt, indeed!” said Mr. Dyce, feeling extraordinarily foolish, and,
walking past them, he went up-stairs and hurriedly put the pea-sling in
his pocket.
When he came down, young America was indifferently pecking at her second
breakfast with Footles on her knee, an aunt on either side of her, and
the maid Kate with a tray in her hand for excuse, open-mouthed, half in
at the door.
“Well, as I was saying, Jim--that's my dear Mr. Molyneux, you know--got
busy with a lot of the boys once he landed off that old ship, and so he
said, 'Bud, this is the--the--justly cel'brated Great Britain; I know
by the boys; they're so lively when they're by themselves. I was
'prehensive we might have missed it in the dark, but it's all right.'
And next day he bought me this muff and things and put me on the
cars--say, what funny cars you have!--and said 'Good-bye, Bud; just go
right up to Maryfield, and change there. If you're lost anywhere on the
island just holler out good and loud, and I'll hear!' He pretended he
wasn't caring, but he was pretty blinky 'bout the eyes, and I saw he
wasn't anyway gay, so I never let on the way I felt myself.”
She suggested the tone and manner of the absent Molyneux in a fashion
to put him in the flesh before them. Kate almost laughed out loud at the
oddity of it; Ailie and her brother were astounded at the cleverness of
the mimicry; Bell clinched her hands, and said for the second time that
day, “Oh! that Molyneux, if I had him!”
“He's a nice man, Jim. I can't tell you how I love him--and he gave
me heaps of candy at the depot,” proceeded the unabashed new-comer.
“'Change at Edinburgh,' he said; 'you'll maybe have time to run into the
Castle and see the Duke; give him my love, but not my address. When you
get to Maryfield hop out slick and ask for your uncle Dyce.' And then he
said, did Jim, 'I hope he ain't a loaded Dyce, seein' he's Scotch, and
it's the festive season.'”
“The adorable Jim!” said Ailie. “We might have known.”
“I got on all right,” proceeded the child, “but I didn't see the Duke of
Edinburgh; there wasn't time, and uncle wasn't at Maryfield, but a man
put me on his mail carriage and drove me right here. He said I was a
caution. My! it was cold. Say, is it always weather like this here?”
“Sometimes it's like this, and sometimes it's just ordinary Scotch
weather,” said Mr. Dyce, twinkling at her through his spectacles.
“I was dre'ffle sleepy in the mail, and the driver wrapped me up, and
when I came into this town in the dark he said, 'Walk right down there
and rap at the first door you see with a brass man's hand for a knocker;
that's Mr. Dyce's house.' I came down, and there wasn't any brass man,
but I saw the knocker. I couldn't reach up to it, so when I saw a man
going into the church with a lantern in his hand. I went up to him and
pulled his coat. I knew he'd be all right going into a church. He told
me he was going to ring the bell, and I said I'd give him a quarter--oh,
I said that before. When the bell was finished he took me to his house
for luck--that was what he said--and he and his wife got right up and
boiled eggs. They said I was a caution, too, and they went on boiling
eggs, and I couldn't eat more than two and a white though I tried _and_
tried. I think I slept a good while in their house; I was so fatigued,
and they were all right, they loved me, I could see that. And I liked
them some myself, though they must be mighty poor, for they haven't
any children. Then the bellman took me to this house, and rapped at
the door, and went away pretty quick for him before anybody came to
it, because he said he was plain-soled--what's plain-soled anyhow?--and
wasn't a lucky first-foot on a New Year's morning.''
“It beats all, that's what it does!” cried Bell. “My poor wee
whitterick! Were ye no' frightened on the sea?”
“Whitterick, whitterick,” repeated the child to herself, and Ailie,
noticing, was glad that this was certainly not a diffy. Diffies never
interest themselves in new words; diffies never go inside themselves
with a new fact as a dog goes under a table with a bone.
“Were you not frightened when you were on the sea?” repeated Bell.
“No,” said the child, promptly. “Jim was there all right, you see, and
he knew all about it. He said, 'Trust in Providence, and if it's _very_
stormy, trust in Providence _and_ the Scotch captain.'”
“I declare! the creature must have some kind of sense in him, too,” said
Bell, a little mollified by this compliment to Scots sea-captains. And
all the Dyces fed their eyes upon this wonderful wean that had fallen
among them. 'Twas happy in that hour with them, as if in a miracle they
had been remitted to their own young years; their dwelling was at long
last furnished! She had got into the good graces of Footles as if she
had known him all her life.
“Say, uncle, this is a funny dog,” was her next remark. “Did God make
him?”
“Well--yes, I suppose God did,” said Mr. Dyce, taken a bit aback.
“Well, isn't He the damedst! This dog beats Mrs. Molyneux's Dodo, and
Dodo was a looloo. What sort of a dog is he? Scotch terrier?”
“Mostly not,” said her uncle, chuckling. “It's really an improvement on
the Scotch terrier. There's later patents in him, you might say. He's a
sort of mosaic; indeed, when I think of it you might describe him as a
pure mosaic dog.”
“A Mosaic dog!” exclaimed Lennox. “Then he must have come from
scriptural parts. Perhaps I'll get playing with him Sundays. Not playing
loud out, you know, but just being happy. I love being happy, don't
you?”
“It's my only weakness,” said Mr. Dyce, emphatically, blinking through
his glasses. “The other business men in the town don't approve of me for
it; they call it frivolity. But it comes so easily to me I never charge
it in the bills, though a sense of humor should certainly be worth 12s.
6d. a smile in the Table of Fees. It would save many a costly plea.”
“Didn't you play on Sunday in Chicago?” asked Ailie.
“Not out loud. Poppa said he was bound to have me Scotch in one thing
at least, even if it took a strap. That was after mother died. He'd just
read to me Sundays, and we went to church till we had pins and needles.
We had the Reverend Ebenezer Paul Frazer, M.A., Presbyterian Church on
the Front. He just preached _and_ preached till we had pins and needles
all over.”
“My poor Lennox!” exclaimed Ailie, with feeling.
“Oh, I'm all right!” said young America, blithely. “I'm not kicking.”
Dan Dyce, with his head to the side, took off his spectacles and rubbed
them clean with his handkerchief; put them on again, looked at his niece
through them, and then at Ailie, with some motion struggling in his
countenance. Ailie for a moment suppressed some inward convulsion, and
turned her gaze embarrassed from him to Bell, and Bell catching the eyes
of both of them could contain her joy no longer. They laughed till the
tears came, and none more heartily than brother William's child. She had
so sweet a laugh that there and then the Dyces thought it the loveliest
sound they had ever heard in their house. Her aunts would have devoured
her with caresses. Her uncle stood over her and beamed, rubbing his
hands, expectant every moment of another manifestation of the oddest
kind of child mind he had ever encountered. And Kate swept out and in
between the parlor and the kitchen on trivial excuses, generally with
something to eat for the child, who had eaten so much in the house of
Wanton Wully Oliver that she was indifferent to the rarest delicacies of
Bell's celestial grocery.
“You're just--just a wee witch!” said Bell, fondling the child's hair.
“Do you know, that man Molyneux--”
“Jim,” suggested Lennox.
“I would Jim him if I had him! That man Molyneux in all his scrimping
little letters never said whether you were a boy or a girl, and we
thought a Lennox was bound to be a boy, and all this time we have been
expecting a boy.”
“I declare!” said the little one, with the most amusing drawl, a memory
of Molyneux. “Why, I always was a girl, far back as I can remember.
Nobody never gave me the chance to be a boy. I s'pose I hadn't the
clothes for the part, and they just pushed me along anyhow in frocks.
Would you'd rather I was a boy?”
“Not a bit! We have one in the house already, and he's a fair
heart-break,” said her aunt, with a look towards Mr. Dyce. “We had just
made up our mind to dress you in the kilt when your rap came to the
door. At least, I had made up my mind, the others are so stubborn. And
bless me! lassie, where's your luggage? You surely did not come all the
way from Chicago with no more than what you have on your back?”
“You'll be tickled to death to see my trunks!” said Lennox. “I've heaps
and heaps of clothes and six dolls. They're all coming with the coach.
They wanted me to wait for the coach too, but the mail man who called me
a caution said he was bound to have a passenger for luck on New Year's
Day, and I was in a hurry to get home anyway.”
“Home!” When she said that, the two aunts swept on her like a billow and
bore her, dog and all, up-stairs to her room. She was almost blind for
want of sleep.
They hovered over her quick-fingered, airy as bees, stripping her for
bed. She knelt a moment and in one breath said:
“God - bless - father - and - mother - and - Jim - and - Mrs. - Molyneux
- and - my - aunts - in - Scotland - and Uncle - Dan - and - everybody -
good - night.”
And was asleep in the sunlight of the room as soon as her head fell on
the pillow.
“She prayed for her father and mother,” whispered Bell, with Footles
in her arms, as they stood beside the bed. “It's not--it's not quite
Presbyterian to pray for the dead; it's very American, indeed you might
call it papist.”
Ailie's face reddened, but she said nothing.
“And do you know this?” said Bell, shamefacedly, “I do it myself; upon
my word, I do it myself. I'm often praying for father and mother and
William.”
“So am I,” confessed Alison, plainly relieved. “I'm afraid I'm a poor
Presbyterian, for I never knew there was anything wrong in doing so.”
Below, in the parlor, Mr. Dyce stood looking into the white garden, a
contented man, humming:
“Star of Peace, to wanderers weary.”