“Would you like to see her?” said Bud, quickly; “then—then, some day I'll tell her, and I'll bet she'll come. She dresses queer—like a lady in the 'School for Scandal,' and wears long mittens like Miss Minto, and when our music-master, Herr Laurent, is round she makes goo-goo eyes at him fit to crack her glasses. 'Oh, Hair-r-r!' she says, sitting with her mitts in her lap—'oh, Hair-r-r! Can you no' give the young ladies wiselike Scotch songs instead o' that dreich Concone?' And sometimes she'll hit him with a fan. He says she plays the piano to our dancing the same as it was a spinet.”
“I declare it beats all!” said Miss Bell. “Does the decent old body speak Scotch?”
“Sometimes. When she's making goo-goo eyes at the Herr, or angry, or finding fault with us but doesn't want to hurt our feelings.”
“I can understand that,” said Miss Bell, with a patriot's fervor; “there's nothing like the Scotch for any of them. I fall to it myself when I'm sentimental; and so does your uncle Dan.”
“She says she's the last of the real Macintoshes—that all the rest you see on Edinburgh signboards are only in-comers or poor de-degenerate cadets; and I guess the way she says it, being a de-degenerate cadet Mackintosh must be the meanest thing under the cope and canopy. Heaps of those old ancestors of hers went out in the days of the clans, fighting for any royalty that happened along. She's got all their hair in lockets, and makes out that when they disappeared Scotland got a pretty hard knock. I said to her once the same as Aunt Ailie says to you, Aunt Bell, 'English and Scots, I s'pose we're all God's people, and it's a terribly open little island to be quarrelling in, seeing all the Continent can hear us quite plain,' but she didn't like it. She said it was easy seen I didn't understand the dear old Highland mountains, where her great-great-grandfather, Big John of the Axe, could collect five hundred fighting-men if he wagged a fiery cross at them. 'I have Big John's blood in me!' she said, quite white, and her head shaking so much her preserves nearly fell off her nose. 'I've Big John's blood in me; and when I think of things, I hate the very name o' thae aboaminable English!' 'Why, you've never seen them, Miss Mackintosh,' I said—for I knew she'd never had a foot outside Scotland. 'No,' said she, quite sharp, 'and I don't want to, for they might be nice enough, and then I wad be bound to like them.'”
“Oh, Bell!” cried Ailie, laughing, “Miss Mackintosh is surely your doppelganger.”
“I don't know what a doppelganger is,” said Auntie
Bell; “but she's a real sensible body, and fine I would like to see her.”
“Then I'll have to fix it somehow,” said Bud, with emphasis. “P'r'aps you'll meet her when you come to Edinburgh—”
“I'm not there yet, my dear.”