Captain Charles looked sideways keenly at the child as she sat beside him, half afraid himself of the irony he had experienced among her countrymen, but saw it was not here. Indeed, it never was in Lennox Dyce, for all her days she had the sweet, engaging self-unconsciousness no training can command: frankness, fearlessness, and respect for all her fellows—the gifts that will never fail to make the proper friends. She talked so composedly that he was compelled to frankness himself on a subject no money could have made him speak about to any one a week ago.
“Between you and me and the mast,” said he, “I'm feared Kate has got far too clever for the like of me, and that's the way I have not called on her.”
“Then you'd best look pretty spry,” said Bud, pointing a monitory finger at him, “for there's beaux all over the place that's wearing their Sunday clothes week-days, and washing their faces night and morning, hankering to tag on to her, and she'll maybe tire of standing out in the cold for you. I wouldn't be skeered, Cap', if I was you; she's not too clever for or'nary use; she's nicer than ever she was that time you used to walk with her in Colonsay.” Bud was beginning to be alarmed at the misgivings to which her own imaginings had given rise.
“If you saw her letters,” said Charles, gloomily. “Poetry and foreign princes. One of them great at the dancing! He kissed her hand. He would never have ventured a thing like that if she hadn't given him encouragement.”
“Just diversion,” said Bud, consolingly. “She was only—she was only putting by the time; and she often says she'll only marry for her own conveniency, and the man for her is—well, you know, Captain Charles.” “There was a Russian army officer,” proceeded the seaman, still suffering a jealous doubt.
“But he's dead. He's deader 'n canned beans. Mr. Wanton gied him—gied him the baggonet. There wasn't really anything in it, anyway. Kate didn't care for him the tiniest bit, and I guess it was a great relief.”
“Then she's learning the piano,” said the Captain; “that's not like a working-gyurl. And she talked in one of her letters about sitting on Uncle Dan's knee.” Bud dropped the dog at her feet and burst into laughter; in that instance she had certainly badly jumbled the identities.
“It's nothing to laugh at,” said the Captain, tugging his beard. “It's not at all becoming in a decent gyurl; and it's not like the Kate I knew in Colonsay.” Bud saw the time had come for a full confession. “Captain Charles,” she said, when she recovered herself, “it—it wasn't Kate said that at all; it was another girl called Winifred Wallace. You see, Kate is always so busy doing useful things—such soup! and—and a-washing every Monday, and taking her education, and the pens were all so dev—so—so stupid, that she simply had to get some one to help her write those letters; and that's why Winifred Wallace gave a hand and messed things up a bit, I guess. Where the letters talked solemn sense about the weather and the bad fishing and bits about Oronsay, and where they told you to be sure and change your stockings when you came down-stairs from the mast out the wet, and where they said you were the very, very one she loved, that was Kate; but when there was a lot of dinky talk about princes and Russian army officers and slabs of poetry, that was just Winifred Wallace putting on lugs and showing off. No, it wasn't all showing off; it was because she kind of loved you herself. You see, she didn't have any beau of her own, Mr. Charles, and—and she thought it wouldn't be depriving Kate of anything to pretend, for Kate said there was no depravity in it.”
“Who's Winifred Wallace?” asked the surprised sailor.
“I'm all the Winifred Wallace there is,” said Bud, penitently. “It's my poetry name—it's my other me. I can do a heap of things when I'm Winifred I can't do when I'm plain Bud, or else I'd laugh at myself enough to hurt, I'm so mad. Are you angry, Mr. Charles?”