“A terrible man for the ladies, William!” was all that the lawyer had to say. “There was some talk about doing a little to the garden, but, hoots, man! don't let it spoil your smoke!”
It was then you would see Wanton Wully busy. Where would Bud be then? At her lessons? No, no, you may be sure of it; but in with Kate of Colonsay, giving the maid the bloody tale of Inkerman. It was a far finer and more moving story as it came from Bud than ever it was on the lips of Wanton Wully. From him she only got the fling of the arms that drove the bayonet home, the lips pursed up as if they were gathered by a string, the fire of the moment, and the broad Scots tongue he spoke in. To what he gave she added fancy and the drama.
“As black as a ton o' coal, wi' the creesh o' the cartridges;... either him or me;... I gie'd him,... I gie'd him;... I shut my eyes, and said, 'O God, Thy pardon!' and gie'd him the baggonet!”
Kate's apron at that would fly up to cover her eyes, for she saw before her all the bloody spectacle. “I'm that glad,” she would say, “that my lad's a sailor. I couldna sleep one iota at night thinkin' of their baggonets if he was a man o' war. And that puts me in mind, my dear, it's more than a week since we sent the chap a letter. Have you time the now to sit and write a scrape to Hamburg on the Elbow—imports iron ore?”
And Bud had time, and sit she would and write a lovely letter to Charles Maclean of Oronsay. She told him that her heart was sore, but she must confess that she had one time plighted her troth to a Russian army officer, who died, alas! on the bloody field. His last words, as his life-blood slowly ebbed away, were:
“What would be the last words of a Russian officer who loved you?” asked Bud, biting her pen in her perplexity.
“Toots! anything—'my best respects to Kate,'” said the maid, who had learned by this time that the letters Charles liked the most were the ones where Bud most freely used imagination.
“I don't believe it would,” said Bud. “It'd sound far too calm for a man that's busy dying.” But she put it down all the same, feeling it was only fair that Kate should have some say in the letters written in her name.
That was the day they gave him a hint that a captain was wanted on the yacht of Lady Anne.
And still Kate's education made some progress, as you may see from what she knew of Hamburg, though she was not yet the length of writing her own love-letters. She would sit at times at night for hours quite docile, knitting in the kitchen, listening to the reading of the child. A score of books had been tried on her by Aunt Ailie's counsel (for she was in the secret of this Lower Dyce Academy), but none there was that hit the pupil's fancy half so much as her own old favorite penny novelettes till they came one happy day to The Pickwick Papers. Kate grew very fond of The Pickwick Papers. The fun of them being in a language quite unknown in Colonsay was almost all beyond her. But “that poor Mr. Puckwuck!” she would cry at each untoward accident; “oh, the poor wee man!” and the folk were as real to her as if she had known them all in Colonsay. If Dickens could have known the curious sentiments his wandering hero roused in this Highland servant mind he would have greatly wondered.