The Highland maid had brought from Colonsay a flesh that crept in darkness, a brain with a fantastic maggot in it; she declared to goodness, and to Bud sometimes, that she had no life of it with ghosts in her small back room. But Bud was not to let on to her aunties. Forbye it was only for Kate they came, the ghosts; did Bud not hear them last night? Geese! No, not geese, Kate knew different, and if the thing lasted much longer she would stay no more in this town; she would stay nowhere, she would just go back to Colonsay. Not that Colonsay was better; there were often ghosts in Colonsay—in the winter-time, and then it behooved you to run like the mischief, or have a fine strong lad with you for your convoy. If there were no ghosts in America it was because it cost too much to go there on the steamers. Harken to yon—“Honk, honk!”—did ever you hear the like of it? Who with their wits about them in weather like that would like to be a ghost? And loud above the wind that rocked the burgh in the cradle of the hills, loud above the beating rain, the creak of doors and rap of shutters in that old house, Bud and Kate together in the kitchen heard again the “honk, honk!” of the geese. Then it was for the child that she missed the mighty certainty of Chicago, that Scotland somehow to her mind seemed an old unhappy place, in the night of which went passing Duncan, murdered in his sleep, and David Rizzio with the daggers in his breast, and Helen of Kirk-connel Lee. The nights but rarely brought any fear for her in spite of poor Kate's ghosts, since the warmth and light and love of the household filled every corner of lobby and stair, and went to bed with her. When she had said her prayer the geese might cry, the timbers of the old house crack, Bud was lapped in the love of God and man, and tranquil. But the mornings dauntened her often when she wakened to the sound of the six-o'clock bell. She would feel, when it ceased, as if all virtue were out of last night's love and prayer. Then all Scotland and its curious scraps of history as she had picked it up weighed on her spirit for a time; the house was dead and empty; not ghost nor goose made her eerie, but mankind's old inexplicable alarms. How deep and from what distant shores comes childhood's wild surmise! There was nothing to harm her, she knew, but the strangeness of the dawn and a craving for life made her at these times the awakener of the other dwellers in the house of Dyce.
She would get out of bed and go next door to the room of Ailie, and creep in bed beside her to kiss her for a little from her dreams. To the aunt these morning visitations were precious: she would take the bairn to her bosom and fall asleep with sighs of content, the immaculate mother. Bud herself could not sleep then for watching the revelation of her lovely auntie in the dawn—the cloud on the pillow, that turned to masses of hazel hair, the cheeks and lips that seemed to redden like flowers as the day dawned, the nook of her bosom, the pulse of her brow.
Other mornings Wanton Wully's bell would send her in to Bell, who would give her the warm hollow of her own place in the blankets, while she herself got up to dress briskly for the day's affairs. “Just you lie down there, pet, and sleepy-baw,” she would say, tying her coats with trim tight knots. “You will not grow up a fine, tall, strong girl like your Auntie Ailie if you do not take your sleep when you can get it. The morning is only for done old wives like me that have things to do and don't grudge doing them.”
She would chatter away to Bud as she dressed, a garrulous auntie this, two things always for her text—the pride of Scotland, and the virtue of duty done. A body, she would say, was sometimes liable to weary of the same things to be done each day, the same tasks even-on, fires and food and cleansing, though the mind might dwell on great deeds desirable to be accomplished, but pleasure never came till the thing was done that was the first to hand, even if it was only darning a stocking. What was Bud going to be when she grew up? Bud guessed she wasn't going to be anything but just a lady. Ah, yes, but even ladies had to do something wise-like; there was Ailie—to go no farther—who could have managed a business though her darning was but lumpy. Even for a lady there was nothing nobler than the making of her own bed; besides the doctors said it was remarkably efficacious for the figure.
Bud, snug in her auntie's blankets, only her nose and her bright bead eyes showing in the light of the twirly wooden candlestick, guessed Mrs. Molyneux was the quickest woman to get through work ever she saw: why! she just waved it to one side and went out to shop or lunch with Jim.
A look of pity for Mrs. Molyneux, the misguided, would come to Bell's face, but for those folk in America she never had a word of criticism in the presence of the child. All she could say was America was different. America was not Scotland. And Scotland was not England, though in many places they called Scotch things English.
Jim used to say, speaking of father, that a Scotsman was a kind of superior Englishman.
Bell wished to goodness she could see the man—he must have been a clever one!
Other mornings again would the child softly open her uncle's door and he would get a terrible fright, crying “Robbers! but you'll get nothing. I have my watch in my boots, and my money in my mouth.”
She would creep beside him, and in these early hours began her education. She was learning Ailie's calm and curiosity and ambition, she was learning Bell's ideas of duty and the ancient glory of her adopted land; from her uncle she was learning many things, of which the least that seemed useful at the time was the Lord's Prayer in Latin. Pater noster qui es in coelis—that and a few hundred of Trayner's Latin maxims was nearly all of the classic tongue that survived with the lawyer from student days. It was just as good and effective a prayer in English, he admitted, but somehow, whiles, the language was so old it brought you into closer grips with the original. Some mornings she would hum to him coon songs heard in her former home; and if he was in trim he himself would sing some psalm to the tune of Coleshill, French, Bangor, or Tor-wood. His favorite was Torwood; it mourned so—mourned so! Or at other times a song like “Mary Morison.”