CHAPTER III
I MISDOUBTED Mr. Molyneux from the very first,” said Ailie, turning as white as a clout. “From all his post-cards he was plainly too casual. Stop it, Bell, my dear—have sense; the child's in a Christian land, and in the care of somebody who is probably more dependable than this delightful Molyneux.”
Mr. Dyce took out an old, thick, silver verge. “Nine o'clock,” he said, with a glance at its creamy countenance. “Molyneux's consignment is making his first acquaintance with Scottish scenery and finding himself, I hope, amused at the Edinburgh accent. He'll arrive at Maryfield—poor, wee smout!—at three; if I drive over at twelve, I'll be in time to meet him. Tuts, Bell, give over; he's a ten-year-old and a Dyce at that—there's not the slightest fear of him.”
“Ten years old, and in a foreign country—if you can call Scotland a foreign country,” cried Miss Dyce, still sobbing with anger and grief. “Oh, the cat-witted scamp, that Molyneux—if I had him here!”
The dining-room door opened and let in a yawning dog of most plebeian aspect, longest lie-abed of the household, the clamor of the street, and the sound of sizzling bacon, followed by Kate's majestic form at a stately glide, because she had on her new stiff lilac print that was worn for breakfast only on Sundays and holidays. “You would think I was never coming,” she said, genially, and smiled widely as she put the tray on the sideboard. This that I show you, I fear, is a beggarly household, absurdly free from ceremony. Mr. Dyce looked at his sister Ailie and smiled; Ailie looked at her sister Bell and smiled. Bell took a hair-pin or two out of their places and seemed to stab herself with them viciously in the nape of the neck, and smiled not at all nor said anything, for she was furious with Molyneux, whom she could see in her mind's eye—an ugly, tippling, frowzy-looking person with badly polished boots, an impression that would have greatly amused Mrs. Molyneux, who, not without reason, counted her Jim the handsomest man and the best dressed in the profession in all Chicago.
“I'm long of coming, like Royal Charlie,” Kate proceeded, as she passed the ashets on to Miss Dyce; “but, oh me! New Year's Day here is no' like New Year's Day in the bonny isle of Colonsay.”
Mr. Dyce said grace and abstractedly helped himself alternately from both ends of a new roll of powdered butter. “Dan, dear, don't take the butter from both ends—it spoils the look,” said Bell. “Tuts!” said he. “What's the odds? There'll be no ends at all when we're done with it. I'm utterly regardless of the symmetrical and the beautiful this morning. I'm savage to think of that man Molyneux. If I was not a man of peace I would be wanting to wring Mr. Moly-neux's neck,” and he twisted his morning roll in halves with ferocious hands.
“Dan!” said Ailie, shocked. “I never heard you say anything so blood-thirsty in all my life before. I would never have thought it of you.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “There's many things about me you never suspected. You women are always under delusions about the men—about the men—well, dash it! about the men you like. I know myself so well that there is no sin, short of one or two not so accounted, that I cannot think myself capable of. I believe I might be forced into robbing a kirk if I had no money and was as hungry as I was this morning before that post-card came to ruin a remarkably fine New-Year's-Day appetite, or even into murdering a man like Molyneux who failed in the simplest duties no man should neglect.”