SUDDENLY all the town began to talk of the pride of Kate MacNeill. She
took to wearing all her best on week-days, abandoned the kitchen window,
and ruined an old-established trade in pay-night sweeties that used to
shower on her in threepenny packets at the start of every autumn when
the days grew short. No longer blate young lads scraped with their feet
uneasily in the sawdust of P. & A. Mac-Glashan's, swithering between the
genteel attractions of Turkish Delight and the eloquence of conversation
lozenges that saved a lot of thinking and made the blatest equal with
the boldest when it came to tender badinage below the lamp at the
back-door close with Dyce's maid. Talk about the repartee of salons! wit
moves deliberately there compared with the swift giff-gaff that Kate
and her lads were used to maintain with sentiments doubly sweet and
ready-made at threepence the quarter pound. So fast the sweeties passed,
like the thrust and riposte of rapiers, that their final purpose
was forgotten; they were sweeties no longer to be eaten, but scented
billets-doux, laconic of course, but otherwise just as satisfactory
as those that high-born maidens get only one at a time and at long
intervals when their papas are out at business.
“Are you engaged?”
“Just keep spierin'.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“You are a gay deceiver.”
“My heart is yours.”
“How are your poor feet?”
By the hour could Kate sustain such sparkling flirtations, or at least
till a “Kiss me, dearest” turned up from the bottom of the poke, and
then she slapped his face for him. It is the only answer out in Colonsay
unless he's your intended.
But it stopped all at once. P. & A. was beat to understand what way his
pay-night drawings fell, until he saw that all the lads were taking the
other side of the street. “That's _her_ off, anyway!” said he to Mrs.
P. & A., with a gloomy visage. “I wonder who's the lucky man? It's maybe
Peter--she'll no' get mony lozengers from him.”
And it was not only the decline in votive offerings that showed the
vital change: she was not at the Masons' ball, which shows how wrong
was the thought of P. & A., for Peter was there with another lady. Very
cheery, too, exceedingly cheery, ah, desperately gay, but quite beyond
the comprehension of his partner, Jenny Shand, who was unable to fathom
why a spirit so merry in the hall should turn to groans and bitterness
when, feeling a faintish turn, she got him in behind the draught-screen
on the landing of the stair to sit the “Flowers o' Edinburgh.” He was
fidging fain to tell her plainly what he thought of all her sex, but
strove like a perfect gentleman against the inclination, and only said,
“Ha! ha! do you say so, noo?” and “Weemen!” with a voice that made them
all out nothing more nor less than vipers. Poor Jenny Shand!
bonny Jenny Shand! what a shame she should be bothered with so
ill-faured a fellow! When she was picking bits of nothing off his coat
lapel, as if he was her married man, and then coming to herself with a
pretty start and begging pardon for her liberty, the diffy paid no heed;
his mind was down the town, and he was seeing himself yesterday morning
at the first delivery getting the window of Dyce's kitchen banged in his
face when he started to talk about soap, meaning to work the topic round
to hands and gloves. He had got the length of dirty hands, and asked the
size of hers, when bang! the window went, and the Hielan' one in among
her pots and pans.
It was not any wonder, for other lads as deliberate and gawky as himself
had bothered her all the week with the same demand. Hands! hands!
you would think, said she, they were all at the door wi' a bunch of
finger-rings bound to marry her right or wrong, even if they had to put
them on her nose. Of course she knew finely what they were after--she
knew that each blate wooer wanted a partner for the ball, and could only
clinch the compact with a pair of gloves; but just at present she was
not in trim for balls, and landsmen had no interest for her since her
heart was on the brine. Some of them boldly guessed at seven-and-a-halfs
without inquiry, and were dumfoundered that she would not look at them;
and one had acquired a pair of roomy white cotton ones with elastic
round the top--a kind of glove that plays a solemn part at burials,
having come upon Miss Minto when her stock of festive kids was done.
They waylaid Kate coming with her basket from the mangle--no, thanky,
she was needing no assistance; or she would find them scratching at the
window after dark; or hear them whistling, whistling, whistling--oh,
so softly!--in the close. There are women rich and nobly born who think
that they are fortunate, and yet, poor dears! they never heard the
whistling in the close. Kate's case was terrible! By day, in her walks
abroad in her new merino, not standing so much as a wink, or paying any
heed to a “Hey, Kate, what's your hurry?” she would blast them with a
flashing eye. By night, hearing their signals, she showed them what she
thought of them by putting to the shutters. “Dir-r-rt!” was what she
called them, with her nose held high and every “r” a rattle on the lug
for them--this to Bud, who could not understand the new distaste Kate
had to the other sex. “Just dirt below my feet! I think myself far, far
above them.”
One evening Mr. Dyce came in from his office and quizzed her in the
lobby. “Kate,” said he, “I'm not complaining, but I wish you would have
mercy on my back door. There's not a night I have come home of late but
if I look up the close I find a lad or two trying to bite his way into
you through the door. Can you no' go out, like a good lass, and talk at
them in the Gaelic--it would serve them right! If you don't, steps will
have to be taken with a strong hand, as you say yourself. What are they
wanting? Can this--can this be love?”
She ran to the sanctuary of the kitchen, plumped in a chair, and was
swept away in a storm of laughter and tears that frightened Bud, who
waited there a return of her aunts from the Women's Guild. “Why, Kate,
what's the matter?” she asked.
“Your un--your un--un--uncle's blaming me for harboring all them chaps
about the door, and says it's l-l-love--oh, dear! I'm black affronted.”
“You needn't go into hysterics about a little thing like that,” said
Bud. “Uncle Dan's tickled to death to see so many beaux you have,
wanting you to that ball; he said last night he had to walk between so
many of them waiting for you there in front, it was like shassaying up
the middle in the 'Haymakers'.”
“It's not hysterics, nor hersterics, either,” said the maid; “and oh, I
wish I was out of here and back in the isle of Colonsay!”
Yes, Colonsay became a great place then. America, where the prospects
for domestics used to be so fascinating, had lost its glamour since Bud
had told her the servants there were as discontented as in Scotland,
and now her native isle beat paradise. She would talk by the hour, at a
washing, of its charms, of which the greatest seemed to be the absence
of public lamps and the way you heard the wind! Colonsay seemed to be
a place where folk were always happy, meeting in one another's houses,
dancing, singing, courting, marrying, getting money every now and then
from sons or wealthy cousins in Australia. Bud wondered if they never
did any work in Colonsay. Yes, yes, indeed! Kate could assure her, they
worked quite often out in Colonsay--in the winter-time.
But one thing greatly troubled her--she must write back at once to
the only Charles, who so marvellously had come to her through Bud's
unconscious offices, and she knew she could never sustain the standard
of hand-write, spelling, and information Bud had established in her
first epistle. Her position was lamentable. It was all very well to be
the haughty madam on the street, and show herself a wise like, modest
gyurl, but what was that without the education? C. Maclean was a man of
education--he got it on the yats among the gentry, he had travelled all
the world!
Kate's new airs, that caused such speculation in the town, were--now
let me tell you--all the result of a dash at education. She wanted to be
able to write a letter as good as Bud in a week or two, and had engaged
the child to tutor her.
Bud never found a more delicious game in all her life, and it hurried
her convalescence, for to play it properly she must be Aunt Ailie, and
Aunt Ailie was always so strong and well.
“Education,” said Bud, who had a marvellous memory, and was now, you
will notice, Ailie Dyce, sitting on a high chair, with the maid on a
stool before her--“education is not what a lot of sillies think it is;
it isn't knowing everything. Lots try for it that way, and if they don't
die young, just when they're going to win the bursary, they grow up
horrid bores that nobody asks to picnics. You can't know everything, not
if you sit up cramming till the cows come home; and if you want to see
a brainy person jump, ask him how his mother raised her dough. Miss
Katherine MacNeill, never--never--NEVER be ashamed of not knowing a
thing, but always be ashamed of not wanting to know. That's Part One.
Don't you think you should have an exercise-book, child, and take it
down?”
“Toots! what's my head for?” said the servant.
“Uncle Dan says education is knowing what you don't know, and knowing
where to find it out without the other people knowing; but he says in
most places you can get the name of having it fine and good by talking
loud and pushing all your goods in front of you in a big enough barrow.
And Auntie Bell--she says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,
and the rest of it is what she skipped at Barbara Mushet's Seminary. But
I tell you, child (said the echo of Ailie Dyce), that education's just
another name for love.”
“My stars! I never knew that before,” cried the servant. “I'm awful glad
about Charles!”
“It isn't that kind of love,” Bud hurriedly explained, “though it's good
enough, for that's too easy. You're only on the trail for education when
you love things so you've simply _got_ to learn as much as is good
for your health about them. Everything's sweet--oh, so sweet!--all the
different countries, and the different people, when you understand, and
the woods, and the things in them, and all the animals--'cepting maybe
pud-docks, though it's likely God made them, too, when He was kind of
careless--and the stars, and the things men did, and women--'specially
those that's dead, poor dears!--and all the books, 'cepting the stupid
ones Aunt Ailie simply _can't_ stand, though she never lets on to the
ladies who like that kind.”
“My Lord! must you love them all?” asked the maid, astonished.
“Yes, you must, my Lord,” said Bud. “You'll never know the least thing
well in this world unless you love it. It's sometimes mighty hard, I
allow. I hated the multiplication table, but now I love it--at least, I
kind of love it up to seven times nine, and then it's almost horrid,
but not so horrid as it was before I knew that I would never have got to
this place from Chicago unless a lot of men had learned the table up as
far as twelve times twelve.”
“I'm not particular about the multiplication table,” said the maid,
“but I want to be truly refined, the same as you said in yon letter to
Charles. I know he'll be expecting it.”
“H-m-m-m-m!” said Bud, thoughtfully, “I s'pose I'll have to ask Auntie
Ailie about that, for I declare to goodness I don't know where you get
it, for it's not in any of the books I've seen. She says it's the One
Thing in a lady, and it grows inside you some way, like--like--like your
lungs, I guess. It's no use trying to stick it on outside with lessons
on the piano or the mandoline, and parlor talk about poetry, and
speaking mim as if you had a clothes-pin in your mouth, and couldn't say
the least wee thing funny without it was a bit you'd see in _Life and
Work_. Refinement, some folk think, is not laughing right out.”
“My stars!” said Kate.
“And Auntie Bell says a lot think it's not knowing any Scotch language
and never taking cheese to tea.”
“I think,” said Kate, “we'll never mindrefining; it's an awful bother.”
“But every lady must be refined,” said Bud. “Ailie prosists in that.”
“I don't care,” said the maid; “I'm not particular about being very much
of a lady--I'll maybe never have the jewelry for it--but I would like
to be a sort of lady on the Sundays, when Charles is at home. I'm not
hurryin' you, my dear, but--but when do we start the writin'?” and she
yawned in a way that said little for the interest of Professor Bud's
opening lecture.
Whereupon Bud explained that in a systematic course of education
reading came first, and the best reading was Shakespeare, who was truly
ennobling to the human mind. She brought in Auntie Ailie's Shakespeare
and sat upon the fender, and plunged Kate at once into some queer
society at Elsinore. But, bless you, nothing came of it: Kate fell
asleep, and woke to find the fire cold and the child entranced with
Hamlet.
“Oh, dear! it's a slow job getting your education,” she said, pitifully,
“and all this time there's my dear Charles waiting for a letter!”