I had got to love this young girl who often visited the Grantons. She was not so very young—twenty-two or thereabout. She had a brave, fine face, and it never grew weary, no matter how worried she was inside.
By things the servants said, I knew that Stanna and her brother lived with a grandmother, that they had been very rich, but the war had made them poor, and the grandmother was trying to find a rich husband for Stanna, and the girl wouldn’t help her.
“Hello! Wasp,” said my master, quite like a jolly young boy. His face always lighted up when he saw this pretty girl, and in common with all the persons in her set, he called her by her nickname.
I asked Walter Scott one day why his young mistress was called the Wasp, and he said it was on account of a costume she wore at a fancy ball, a short time ago. The dress was black and gold and had gauzy wings, and ever since that time her intimate friends had called her “Wasp” or “Waspie.”
Miss Stanna had very pretty manners, for much pains had been taken with her education. Naturally, she was very frank and mischievous, but she was always covering up this native gush and frolicsomeness by an assumed conventionality.
To-night she looked merry, and full of fun. She bowed very prettily, and gave a little skip as she held out her hand to my master.
“Grandmother is terribly shocked,” she said laughing all over her face, “but Walter Scott was pining for a run, and the maids are out, and brother Carty too. I promised to stay fifteen minutes only, and to walk up and down in sight of the house. I’m so glad you’ve come—scamper now, Sir Walter and Boy Dog.”
I didn’t want to scamper, I wanted to hear her talk, for I was very much interested in her. So I kept close to my master, and Sir Walter, after finding out that I did not care to accompany him, ran off alone. That dog always had such perfect manners—acquired abroad, for he had been born in a castle in Scotland, and rather looked down on everybody on the Drive, human beings and dogs too, because so few of us were perfectly aristocratic.
He claimed that it was impossible to acquire finish of manner and conventional elegance in a country as new as America. We used to have heated arguments about it, and his known opinions on the subject kept him from becoming a favourite among the dogs in our set.
He said I was an aristocro-democrat dog, while he was pure aristocrat. I said I was a good, American dog, and believed in our own institutions, George Washington and all that sort of thing; and I claimed that if one worked hard enough at it, one could obtain ease of manner and polish in this country as well as in any other.