“I was bom mighty well near eleven years ago,” said Bud, as if she were a centenarian.
Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever, though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that. Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think herself anything out of the ordinary. Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common enough with Young America. But Bud, from Maryfield to her uncle's door, had been a “caution” to the plainly admiring mail-driver; a kind of fairy princess to Wanton Wully Oliver and his wife; the surprise of her aunts had been only half concealed, and here was the maid in an undisguised enchantment! The vanity of the ten-year-old was stimulated; for the first time in her life she felt decidedly superior.
“It was very brave of me to come all this way in a ship at ten years old,” she proceeded.
“I once came to Oban along with a steamer my-self,” said Kate, “but och, that's nothing, for I knew a lot of the drovers. Just fancy you coming from America! Were you not lonely?”
“I was dre'ffle lonely,” said Bud, who, in fact, had never known a moment's dulness across the whole Atlantic. “There was I leaving my native land, perhaps never to set eyes on its shores evermore, and coming to a far country I didn't know the least thing about. I was leaving all my dear young friends, and the beautiful Mrs. Molyneux, and her faithful dog Dodo, and—” Here she squeezed a tear from her eyes, and stopped to think of circumstances even more touching.
“My poor wee hen!” cried Kate, distressed. “Don't you greet, and I'll buy you something.”
“And I didn't know what sort of uncle and aunties they might be here—whether they'd be cruel and wicked or not, or whether they'd keep me or not. Little girls most always have cruel uncles and aunties—you can see that in the books.”
“You were awful stupid about that bit of it,” said the maid, emphatically. “I'm sure anybody could have told you about Mr. Dyce and his sisters.”
“And then it was so stormy,” proceeded Bud, quickly, in search of more moving considerations. “I made a poem about that, too—I just dashed it off; the first verse goes:
“'The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast—'