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Two days passed. Often in those two days would Bud come, asking anxiously if there was any answer yet from Charles. As often the maid of Colonsay reddened, and said with resignation there was not so much as the scrape of a pen. “He'll be on the sea,” she explained at last, “and not near a post-office. Stop you till he gets near a post-office, and you'll see the fine letter I'll get.”
“I didn't know he was a sailor,” said Bud. “Why, I calculated he was a Highland chieftain or a knight, or something like that. If I had known he was a sailor I'd have made that letter different. I'd have loaded it up to the nozzle with sloppy weather, and said, Oh, how sad I was—that's you, Kate—to lie awake nights thinking about him out on the heaving billow. Is he a captain?”
“Yes,” said Kate, promptly. “A full captain in the summer-time. In the winter he just stays at home and helps on his mother's farm. Not a cheep to your aunties about Charles, darling Lennox,” she added, anxiously. “They're—they're that particular!”
“I don't think you're a true love at all,” said Bud, reflecting on many interviews at the kitchen window and the back door. “Just think of the way you make goo-goo eyes at the letter-carrier and the butcher's man and the ash-pit gentleman. What would Charles say?”
“Toots! I'm only putting by the time with them,” explained the maid. “It's only a diversion. When I marry I will marry for my own conveniency, and the man for me is Charles.”
“What's the name of his ship?” asked the child. “The Good Intent,” said Kate, who had known a skiff of the name in Colonsay. “A beautiful ship, with two yellow chimneys, and flags to the masthead.”
“That's fine and fancy!” said Bud. “There was a gentleman who loved me to destruction, coming over on the ship from New York, and loaded me with candy. He was not the captain, but he had gold braid everywhere, and his name was George Sibley Purser. He promised he would marry me when I made a name for myself, but I 'spect Mister J. S. Purser 'll go away and forget.”
“That's just the way with them all,” said Kate.
“I don't care, then,” said Bud. “I'm all right; I'm not kicking.”
Next day the breakfast in the house of Dyce was badly served, for Kate was wild to read a letter that the post had brought, and when she opened it, you may be sure Bud was at her shoulder. It said:
“Dearest Kate,—I love you truly and I am thinking of you most the time. Thank God we was all safed. Now I will tell you all about the Wreck. The sea was mountains high, and we had a cargo of spise and perils from Java on the left-hand side the map as you go to Australia. When the Pirite ship chased us we went down with all hands. But we constrickted a raft and sailed on and on till we had to draw lots who would drink the blood. Just right there a sailor cried 'A sail, A sail, and sure enough it was a sail. And now I will tell you all about Naples. There is a monsterious mountain there, or cone which belches horrid flames and lavar. Once upon' a time it belched all over a town by the name of Pompy and it is there till this very day. The bay of naples is the grandest in the world it is called the golden horn. Dearest Katherine, I am often on the mast at night. It is cold and shakey in that place and oh how the wind doth blow, but I ring a bell and say alls well which makes the saloon people truly glad. We had five stow-ways. One of them was a sweet fairhaired child from Liverpool, he was drove from home. But a good and beautious lady, one of the first new england families is going to adopt him and make him her only air. How beautiful and bright he stood as born to rule the storm. I weary for your letters darling Katherine.—Write soon to your true love till death, Charles.”
Kate struggled through this extraordinary epistle with astonishment. “Who in the world is it from?” she asked Bud.
“Charles, stupid,” said Bud, astonished that there should be any doubt about that point. “Didn't I—didn't we write him the other night? It was up to him to write back, wasn't it?”
“Of course,” said Kate, very conscious of that letter still unposted, “but—but he doesn't say Charles anything, just Charles. It's a daft like thing not to give his name; it might be anybody. There's my Charles, and there's Charles Maclean from Oronsay—what way am I to know which of them it is?”
“It'll be either or eyether,” said Bud. “Do you know Charles Maclean?”
“Of course I do,” said the maid. “He's following the sea, and we were well acquaint.”
“Did he propose to you?” asked Bud.
“Well, he did not exactly propose,” admitted Kate, “but we sometimes went a walk together to the churchyard on a Sunday, and you know yourself what that means out in Colonsay. I'll just keep the letter and think of it. It's the nicest letter I ever got, and full of information. It's Charles Maclean, I'll warrant you, but he did not use to call me Katherine—he just said Kate and his face would be as red as anything. Fancy him going down with all hands! My heart is sore for him,” and the maid there and then transferred her devotion from the misty lad of her own imagination to Charles Maclean of Oronsay.
“You'll help me to write him a letter back to-night,” she said.
“Yes, indeed, I'll love to,” said the child, wearily. But by the time the night came on, and Wanton Wully rang his curfew bell, and the rooks came clanging home to the tall trees of the forest, she was beyond all interest in life or love.