“It don't amount to a hill of beans,” said Bud; “you can wear our locket, and that 'll please him.” Kate went with a palpitating heart through the scullery, out into the garden, with a basket in her hand, a pleasing and expansive figure. Bud would have liked to watch her, but a sense of delicacy prevented, and she stood at the kitchen window looking resolutely into the street. On his way down the stairs Mr. Dyce was humming the Hundredth Psalm; outside the shops were shuttered, and the harmony of the morning hymn came from the baker's open windows. A few folk passed in their Sunday clothes, at a deliberate pace, to differentiate it from the secular hurry of other days. Soon the church bell would ring for the Sabbath-school, and Bud must be ready. Remembering it, a sense of some impiety took possession of her—worldly trysts in back gardens on the Sabbath were not what Aunt Bell would much approve of. Had they met yet? How did Charles look? What did Kate say?
“Mercy on me!” cried the maid, bursting in through the scullery. “Did you say I was to whistle?”
“Of course,” said Bud, and then looked horrified “Oh, Kate,” said she, in a whisper, “I was so keen on the vain things of this wicked world I quite forgot it was the Lord's Day; of course you can't go whistling on Sunday.”
“That's what I was just thinking to myself,” said the maid, not very heartily. “But I thought I would ask you. It wouldn't need to be a time, but—but of course it would be awful wicked—forbye Miss Dyce would be sure to hear me, and she's that particular.”
“No, you can't whistle; you daren't,” said Bud. “It'd be dre'ffle wicked. But how'd it do to throw a stone? Not a rock, you know, but a nice little quiet wee white Sunday pebble? You might like as not be throwing it at Rodger's cats, and that would be a work of necessity and mercy, for these cruel cats are just death on birds.”
“But there's not a single cat there,” explained the maid.
“Never mind,” said Bud. “You can heave the pebble over the wall so that it 'll be a warning to them not to come poaching in our garden; there's sure to be some on the other side just about to get on the wall; and if Charles happens to be there, can you help that?” and Kate retired again.
There was a pause, and then a sound of laughter. For ten minutes Bud waited in an agony of curiosity, that was at last too much for her, and she ventured to look out at the scullery window—to see Charles chasing his adored one down the walk, between the bleaching-green and the gooseberries. Kate was making for the sanctuary of her kitchen, her face aflame and all her streamers flying, but was caught before she entered.
“I told you!” said she, as she came in panting. “We hadn't said twenty words when he wanted to kiss me.”
“Why! was that the reason you ran?” asked Bud, astonished.