CHAPTER XI
BUT the Dyces never really knew how great and serious was the charge bequeathed to them in their brother William's daughter till they saw it all one night in March in the light of a dozen penny candles.
Lennox had come from a world that's lit by electricity, and for weeks she was sustained in wonder and amusement by the paraffine lamps of Daniel Dyce's dwelling. They were, she was sure, the oldest kind of light in all the world—Aladdin-lights that gleamed of old on caverns of gems—till Kate on this particular evening came into the kitchen with the week-end groceries. It was a stormy season—the year of the big winds; moanings were at the windows, sobbings in the chimney-heads, and the street was swept by spindrift rain. Bell and Ailie and their brother sat in the parlor, silent, playing cards with a dummy hand, and Bud, with Footles in her lap, behind the winter dikes on which clothes dried before the kitchen fire, crouched on the fender with a Shakespeare, where almost breathlessly she read the great, the glorious Macbeth.
“My stars, what a night!” said Kate. “The way them slates and chimney-cans are flying! It must be the antinuptial gales. I thought every minute would by my next. Oh, towns! towns! Stop you till I get back to Colonsay, and I'll not leave it in a hurry, I'll assure you.”
She threw a parcel on the kitchen dresser, and turned to the light a round and rosy face that streamed with clean, cooling rain, her hair in tangles on her temples and her eyes sparkling with the light of youth and adventure—for to tell the truth she had been flirting at the door a while, in spite of all the rain, with some admirer.
Bud was the sort of child whose fingers itch in the presence of unopened parcels—in a moment the string was untied from the week-end groceries.
“Candles!” she cried. “Well, that beats the band! I've seen 'em in windows. What in the world are you going to do with candles? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—oh, Laura, ain't we grand!”
“What would we do with them but burn them?” said the maid; “we'll use them in the washing-house,” and then she sank into a chair. “Mercy on me, I declare I'm dying!” she exclaimed, in a different key, and Bud looked round and saw Kate's face had grown of a sudden very pale.
“Oh, dear! what is the matter?” she asked, her eyes large, innocent, and anxious.