“I can not,” said Bud, emphatically. “I hate them.” Miss Bell said not a word more; she was too distressed at such confessed benightedness; but she went out of the parlor to search for Ailie. Bud forgot she was beautiful and tall and old in Ailie's cloak; she was repeating to herself “Man's chief end” with rolling r's, and firmly fixing in her memory the fact that Robert Bruce, not George Washington, was the savior of his country and watched spiders.
Ailie was out, and so her sister found no ear for her bewailings over the child's neglected education till Mr. Dyce came in humming the tune of the day—“Sweet Afton”—to change his hat for one more becoming to a sitting of the sheriff's court. He was searching for his good one in what he was used to call “the piety press,” for there was hung his Sunday clothes, when Bell distressfully informed him that the child could not so much as spell cat.
“Nonsense! I don't believe it,” said he. “That would be very unlike our William.”
“It's true—I tried her myself!” said Bell. “She was never at a school; isn't it just deplorable?”
“H'm!” said Mr. Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”
“She does not know a word of her catechism, nor the name of Robert Bruce, and says she hates counting.”
“Hates counting!” repeated Mr. Dyce, wonderfully cheering up; “that's hopeful; it reminds me of myself. Forbye its gey like Brother William. His way of counting was 'one pound, ten shillings in my pocket, two pounds that I'm owing some one, and ten shillings I get to-morrow— that's five pounds I have; what will I buy you now?' The worst of arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination. Two and two's four and you're done with it; there's no scope for either fun or fancy as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark and swapped their partners by an accident.”
“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still, “and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”
“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan; “excuse my grammar,” and he laughed. “It's an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little patches. I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”
But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still practising “Man's chief end,” so engrossed in the exercise she never heard him enter. He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.