CHAPTER XVII
THERE was joy a few days later in the Dyces' kitchen when Peter the postman, with a snort that showed the bitterness of his feelings, passed through the window a parcel for Kate that on the face of it had come from foreign parts. “I don't ken who it's from, and ye're no' to think I'm askin',” said he; “but the stamps alone for that thing must have cost a bonny penny.”
“Did they, indeed!” said Kate, with a toss of her head. “Ye'll be glad to ken he can well afford it!” and she sniffed at the parcel redolent of perfumes strange and strong.
“Ye needna snap the nose off me,” said the postman; “I only made the remark. What—what does the fellow, do?”
“He's a traveller for railway tunnels,” retorted the maid of Colonsay, and shut the window with a bang, to tear open the parcel in a frenzy of expectation and find a bottle of Genuine Riga Balsam—wonderful cure for sailors' wounds!—another of Florida Water, and a silver locket, with a note from Charles saying the poem she had sent was truly grand, and wishing her many happy returns of the day. Like many of Charles's letters now, its meaning was, in parts, beyond her, until she could learn from Bud the nature of the one to which it was an answer—for Bud was so far enraptured with the wandering sailor that she sometimes sent him letters which the servant never saw. That day the breakfast service smelled of Florida Water, for Kate had drenched herself with the perfume, and Miss Bell was sure she had washed the dishes again with scented soap, as was the habit of the girl when first she came from Colonsay and thought that nothing but Brown Windsor would do justice to Grandma Buntain's tea-set used on Sundays. But Bud could see the signs of Shipping Intelligence, and as soon as she could she hastened to the kitchen, for it was Saturday, and on Saturdays there were no lessons in the Dyce Academy. Oh, how she and Kate fondled the bottles lovingly, and sniffed passionately at their contents, and took turn about of the locket! The maid had but one regret, that she had no immediate use for Riga Balsam; but Bud was more devoted than that—she gently pricked the palm of her hand with a pin and applied the Genuine. “Oh, how he must love me—us, I mean!” she exclaimed, and eagerly devoured his letter.
“What did you say to him in the last?” asked Kate. “He's talking there about a poetry, and happy returns of the day.”
Bud confessed she had made a poem for him from his beloved Kate, and had reckoned on fetching a gift of candy by telling him her birthday was on Monday. “It really I'd just as lief have the balsam,” said she; “it's perfectly lovely; how it nips!”
“It's not my birthday at all,” said Kate. “My birthday's always on the second Sunday in September. I was born about the same time as Lady Anne—either a fortnight before or a fortnight after; I forget mysel' completely which it was, and I dare say so does she.”
“No, but Monday's my birthday, right enough,” said Bud, “and seeing that we're sort of loving him in company, I s'posed it would be all the same.”
“So it is; I'm not complainin',” said the maid. “And now we'll have to send him something back. What would you recommend?”
They considered many gifts appropriate for a sailor—sou'westers, Bible-markers, woollen comforters, and paper-knives, scarf-pins, gloves, and ties. Bud was sure that nothing would delight him like a book about a desert island, but Kate said no, a pipe was just the very ticket—a wooden pipe with silver mountings; the very one to suit was in the window of Mrs. Wright's Italian warehouse.
“What's an Italian warehouse?” asked the child. “You have me there,” said Kate, “unless, maybe, her husband was Italian before he went and died on her. 'Italian Warehouse' is the only thing that's on her sign. She sells a thing for almost any price you like to offer, because the Bible says it's not the thing at all to argy-bargy.”
“I know,” said Bud; “it's what we call running a business on—on—on philanthropic principles. I'd love to see a body do it. I'll run out and buy the pipe from Mrs. Wright, Kate.”
She departed on her errand down the town, at the other side of the church; and the hours of the forenoon passed, and dinner-time was almost come, and still there was no sign of her returning. Kate would have lost her patience and gone to seek for her, but found so much to interest her at the window that she quite forgot her messenger. Something out of the ordinary was happening on the other side of the church. Wanton Wully knew what it was, but of course he was not telling, for he was out as public crier, rousing the town with his hand-bell, and shouting “Notice!” with an air that promised some tremendous tidings; but beyond mysterious words like “bed-rock prices,” which he mumbled from a paper in his hand, there was nothing to show this proclamation differed from the common ones regarding herring at the quay or a sale of delft down-by at John Turner's corner. “What are ye crying?” they asked him, but being a man with the belief that he had a voice as clear as a concert singer he would not condescend to tell them. Only when some one looked across his shoulder and read the paper for himself was it found that a sale described as “Revolutionary” was taking place at the Italian warehouse. Half the town at once went to see what the decent body was up to. Kate saw them hurrying down, and when they came back they were laughing. “What's the ploy?” she asked a passer-by.
“A sale at the Pilgrim weedow's,” she was told. “She's put past her Spurgeon's Sermons and got a book aboot business, and she's learnin' the way to keep an Italian warehouse in Scotch.”
Kate would have been down the town at once to see this marvel for herself, but her pot was on the boil, and here was the mistress coming down the stair crying, “Lennox, Lennox!” The maid's heart sank. She had forgotten Lennox, and how could she explain her absence to a lady so particular? But for the moment she was spared the explanation, for the bark of Footles filled the street and Mr. Dyce came into the lobby laughing.
“You're very joco!” said his sister, helping him off with his coat. “What are you laughing at?”
“The drollest thing imaginable,” said he. “I have just left Captain Consequence in a terrible rage about a letter that a boy has brought to him from Mrs. Wright. He's one of the folk who brag of paying as they go but never make a start. It seems he's as much in debt to her as to most of the other merchants in the place, but wasn't losing any sleep about it, for she's such a softy. This letter has given him a start. He showed it to me, with the notion that it was a libel or a threat that might be actionable, but I assured him I couldn't have written one more to the point myself. It said that unless he paid at once something would be apt to happen that would create him the utmost astonishment.”
“Mercy on us! That's not very like the widow; she must be getting desperate.”
“It was the wording of the thing abused me,” said Mr. Dyce, walking into the parlor still chuckling—“'something will be apt to happen that will create you the utmost astonishment'—it suggests such awful possibilities. And it's going to serve its purpose, too, for the Captain's off to pay her, sure it means a scandal.” Kate took the chance to rush round the kirk in search of her messenger. “This way for the big bargains!” cried some lads coming back from the Italian warehouse, or, “Hey! ye've missed a step”—which shows how funny we can be in the smallest burgh towns—but Kate said nothing only “trash!” to herself in indignation, and tried by holding in her breath to keep from getting red.
The shop of the Pilgrim widow suffered from its signboard, that was “far too big for its job, like the sweep that stuck in my granny's chimney,” as Mr. Dyce said. Once the sign had been P. & A.'s, but P. & A's good lady tired of hearing her husband nicknamed the Italian, and it went back to the painter, who partly paid with it a debt to the Pilgrim widow, who long since rued her acquisition. She felt in her soul it was a worldly vanity—that a signboard less obtrusive on the public eye would more befit herself and her two meek little windows, where fly-papers, fancy goods, sweetmeats, cigarettes, country eggs, and cordial invitations to the Pilgrims' Mission Bethel every Friday (D. V.), eight o'clock, kept one another incongruous and dusty company. A decent, pious widow, but ah! so wanting any saving sense of guile. The Pilgrim Mission was the thing she really lived for, and her shop was the cross she bore. But to-day it was scarcely recognizable: the windows had been swept of their stale contents', and one was filled with piles of rosy apples, the other with nuts that poured in a tempting cataract from a cask upset with an air of reckless prodigality. A large, hand-lettered bill was in each window; one said:
“HALLOWE'EN! ARISE AND SHINE!” and the other: