“And do you know this?” said Bell, shamefacedly, “I do it myself; upon my word, I do it myself. I'm often praying for father and mother and William.”
“So am I,” confessed Alison, plainly relieved. “I'm afraid I'm a poor Presbyterian, for I never knew there was anything wrong in doing so.”
Below, in the parlor, Mr. Dyce stood looking into the white garden, a contented man, humming:
“Star of Peace, to wanderers weary.”
CHAPTER V
SHE was a lucky lassie, this of ours, to have come home to her father's Scotland on that New Year's Day, for there is no denying that it is not always gay in Scotland, contrary land, that, whether we be deep down in the waist of the world and afar from her, or lying on her breast, chains us to her with links of iron and gold—stern tasks and happy days remembered, ancient stories, austerity and freedom, cold weather on moor and glen, warm hearths and burning hearts. She might have seen this burgh first in its solemnity, on one of the winter days when it shivers and weeps among its old memorials, and the wild geese cry more constant over the house-tops, and the sodden gardens, lanes, wynds, and wells, the clanging spirits of old citizens dead and gone, haunting the place of their follies and their good times, their ridiculous ideals, their mistaken ambitions, their broken plans. Ah, wild geese! wild geese! old ghosts that cry to-night above my dwelling, I feel—I feel and know! She might have come, the child, to days of fast, and sombre dark drugget garments, dissonant harsh competing kettle bells, or spoiled harvests, poor fishings, hungry hours. It was good for her, and it is the making of my story, that she came not then, but with the pure white cheerful snow, to ring the burgh bell in her childish escapade, and usher in with merriment the New Year, and begin her new life happily in the Old World.
She woke at noon among the scented curtains, in linen sea-breeze bleached, under the camceil roof that all children love, for it makes a garret like the ancestral cave and in rainy weather they can hear the pattering feet of foes above them. She heard the sound of John Taggart's drum, and the fifing of “Happy we've been a' thegether,” and turning, found upon her pillow a sleeping doll that woke whenever she raised it up, and stared at her in wonderment.
“Oh!—Oh!—Oh! you roly-poly blonde!” cried the child in ecstasy, hugging it to her bosom and covering it with kisses. “I'm as glad as anything. Do you see the lovely little room? I'll tell you right here what your name is: it's Alison; no, it's Bell; no, it's Alibel for your two just lovely, lovely aunties.”