And after all the rascal came without warning, to be for a day and a night within sound of Kate's minstrelsy without her knowing it, for he lodged, an ardent but uncertain man, on the other side of the garden wall, little thinking himself the cause and object of these musical mornings. Bud found him out—that clever one! who was surely come from America to set all the Old World right—she found him at the launching of the Wave.
Lady Anne's yacht dozed like a hedgehog under leaves through the winter months below the beeches on what we call the hard—on the bank of the river under Jocka's house, where the water's brackish, and the launching of her was always of the nature of a festival, for the Earl's men were there, John Taggart's band, with “A Life on the Ocean Wave” between each passage of the jar of old Tom Watson's home-made ale—not tipsy lads but jovial, and even the children of the schools, for it happened on a Saturday.
Bud and Footles went with each other and the rest of the bairns, unknown to their people, for in adventures such as these the child delighted, and was wisely never interdicted.
The man who directed the launch was a stranger in a foreign-looking, soft slouch hat—Charles plain to identify in every feature, in the big, brown, searching eyes that only Gaelic could do justice to, and his walk so steeve and steady, his lovely beard, his tread on the hard as if he owned the land, his voice on the deck as if he were the master of the sea. She stood apart and watched him, fascinated, and could not leave even when the work was done and the band was home-returning, charming the road round the bay with “Peggy Baxter's Quickstep.” He saw her lingering, smiled on her, and beckoned on her to cross the gangway that led to the yacht from the little jetty.
“Well, wee lady,” said he, with one big hand on her head and another on the dog, “is this the first of my crew at a quay-head jump? Sign on at once and I'll make a sailor of you.”
“Oh, please,” said she, looking up in his face, too anxious to enter into his humor, “are you our Kate's Charles?”
“Kate!” said he, reflecting, with a hand in his beard, through which his white teeth shone. “There's such a wheen of Kates here and there, and all of them fine, fine gyurls! Still-and-on, if yours is like most of her name that I'm acquaint with, I'm the very man for her; and my name, indeed, is what you might be calling Charles. In fact”—in a burst of confidence, seating himself on a water-breaker—“my Christian name is Charles—Charlie, for short, among the gentry. You are not speaking, by any chance, of one called Kate MacNeill?” he added, showing some red in the tan of his countenance.
“Of course I am,” said Bud, reproachfully. “Oh, men! men! As if there could be any other! I hope to goodness you love her same as you said you did, and haven't been—been carrying on with any other Kates for a diversion. I'm Lennox Dyce. Your Kate stays with me and Uncle Dan, and Auntie Bell and Auntie Ailie, and this sweet little dog by the name of Footles. She's so jolly! My, won't she be tickled to know you've come! And—and how's the world, Captain Charles?”
“The world?” he said, aback, looking at her curiously as she seated herself beside him on a hatch.
“Yes, the world, you know—the places you were in,” with a wave of the hand that seemed to mean the universe.