No, it was not a march the piper was playing, and very soon she discovered that there was no regiment—only a solitary piper playing the “Keel Row,” with a crowd of unkempt children following him.
Jean pushed in among the children, who made way for this hatless, shoeless person in some astonishment.
“He iss not the ‘Forty-second,’ nor the ‘Gordons,’ nor the ‘Seaforth,’” said Jean to herself, “and why will he wear two tartans?” Then, pulling at the piper’s kilt, she cried shrilly, above the skirl of the pipes: “Can you play ‘Oran an Aoig’?”
The piper took the chanter out of his mouth, and smiled down at the eager, upturned face, asking: “Wot, my dear?”
“‘Oran an Aoig,’” repeated Jean eagerly.
“Sorry I cawn’t oblige you, but I never ’eard tell of that toon,” and the “Keel Row” sounded with renewed and aggressive vigor.
Jean loosed her hold of the kilt and turned to go. There was something uncanny in the speech of this piper, and as she looked more closely, a certain incongruity in his uniform which chilled and disappointed her. The children, however, having recovered from their surprise at her sudden appearance in their midst, decided to have some fun with Jean, and she speedily discovered that to be the only shoeless person in a heavily shod crowd is to be in a most unpleasant minority. Also, she had never been alone in the street before.
Mr. Knagg heard the pipes on his way home to lunch, and having the greatest abhorrence of all street noises, holding that they were, every one, “disturbing to the peace of His Majesty’s lieges,” was hurrying across the road to expostulate with the perpetrator of this new outrage upon his ears, when he caught sight of a familiar shining in the very middle of that rabble of children. He laid about him with his white cotton umbrella, presently emerged from the crowd, bearing a very tearful Jean in his arms, and hailed a cab. The cab and the dog-cart drove up to Jean’s door at the same moment. Mr. Knagg left Jean on the pavement and stalked into his house.
“I said he was a douce man,” sobbed Jean, in the safe shelter of her father’s arms; “but it wass a pittence piper, not one of ours at all.” They say that she felt the deception even more than the bruises on her toes. Her father never managed to thank Mr. Knagg though he called three times.