“It is over now,” said Mr. Dyce, in a whisper, to his sisters, and with his hands on their shoulders led them back into the parlor.
CHAPTER XII
SHE was wayward, she was passionate, she was sometimes wild. She was not what, in the Pigeons' Seminary, could be called a good child, for all her sins were frankly manifest, and she knew no fear nor naughty stratagem; her mind, to all but Kate, was open as the day, and there it was the fault of honest Kate's stupidity. But often Miss Bell must be moaning at transgressions almost harmless in themselves, yet so terribly unlike a Christian bairn, as when Bud spent an afternoon in a tent with some gypsy children, changed clothes with them the better to act a part, and stormed because she could not have them in to tea with her. Or when she asked Lady Anne, bazaar-collecting in the house of Dyce, if she ever had had a proposal. It was a mercy that Lady Anne that very week had had one, and was only too pleased to tell of it and say she had accepted.
“Then you're safe out of the woods,” said Bud, gravely. “There's our Kate, she hasn't had a proposal yet, and I guess she's on the slopey side of thirty. It must be dreff'le to be as old—as old as a house and have no beau to love you. It must be 'scrudating.”
Lady Anne let her eyes turn for a moment on the sisters Dyce, and the child observed and reddened.
“Oh, Auntie Bell!” she said, quickly. “Auntie Bell had heaps and heaps of beaux all dying to marry her, but she gave them the calm, cold eye and said she had to cling to Uncle Dan. It was very noble of her, wasn't it?”
“Indeed it was!” admitted Lady Anne, very much ashamed of herself.
“And Auntie Ailie is not on the slopey side of thirty,” continued Bud, determined to make all amends. “She's young enough to love dolls.”