Wanton Wully sat on a barrow-tram waiting the postman's exit. “What way is she?” said he, and Peter's errant eye cocked to all parts of the compass. What he wanted was to keep this titbit to himself, to have the satisfaction of passing it along with his letters. To give it to Wanton Wully at this stage would be to throw away good-fortune. It was said by Daniel Dyce that the only way to keep a dead secret in the burgh was to send Wully and his handbell round the town with it as public crier. When Wanton Wully cried, it beat you to understand a word he said after “Notice!” but unofficially he was marvellously gleg at circulating news. “What way is she?” he asked again, seeing the postman's hesitation.
“If ye'll promise to stick to the head o' the toun and let me alone in the ither end, I'll tell ye,” said Peter, and it was so agreed.
But they had not long all the glory of the good tidings to themselves. Dr. Brash came out of Dyce's house for the first time in two days, very sunken in the eyes and sorely needing shaving, and it could be noticed by the dullest that he had his jaunty walk and a flower in the lapel of his badly crushed coat. Ailie put it there with trembling fingers; she could have kissed the man besides, if there had not been the chance that he might think her only another silly woman. Later Footles hurled himself in fury from the doorway, his master close behind him. At the sight of Mr. Dyce the street was happy; it was the first time they had seen him for a week. In burgh towns that are small enough we have this compensation, that if we have to grieve in common over many things, a good man's personal joy exalts us all.
“She's better, Mr. Dyce, I'm hearing,” said P. & A. MacGlashan, wiping his hands on his apron to prepare for a fervent clasp from one who he ought to have known was not of the fervent-clasping kind.
“Thank God! Thank God!” said Mr. Dyce. “You would know she was pretty far through?”
“Well—we kind of jaloused. But we kent there was no danger—the thing would be ridiculous!” said P. & A. MacGlashan, and went into his shop in a hurry, much uplifted, too, and picked out a big bunch of black grapes and sent his boy with them, with his compliments, to Miss Lennox Dyce, care of Daniel Dyce, Esquire, Writer.
Miss Minto so adored the man she could not show herself to him in an hour like that; for she knew that she must weep, and a face begrutten ill became her, so in she came from the door of her Emporium and watched him pass the window. She saw in him what she had never seen before—for in his clothing he was always trim and tidy, quite perjink, as hereabouts we say—she saw, with the sharp eyes of a woman who looks at the man she would like to manage, that his hat was dusty and his boots not very brightly polished. More than all the news that leaked that week from the Dyces' dwelling it realized for her the state of things there.
“Tcht! tcht! tcht!” she said to herself; “three of them yonder, and he's quite neglected!” She went into a back room, where gathered the stuff for her Great Annual Jumble Sales with ninepenny things at sevenpence ha'penny, and searched a drawer that sometimes had revealed tremendous joy to Lennox and other bairns who were privileged to see what they called “Miss Minto's back.” In the drawer there was a doll called Grace, a large, robust, and indestructible wooden child that had shared Miss Minto's youth and found the years more kindly than she, since it got no wrinkles thinking on the cares of competition in the millinery and mantua-making trade, but dozed its days away upon feathers and silk and velvet swatches. Grace was dressed like a queen—if queens are attired in gorgeous, hand-stitched remnants; she had so long been part of Miss Minto's life that the mantua-maker swithered in her first intention. But she thought how happy Mr. Dyce must be that day, and hurriedly packed the doll in a box and went round herself with it for Lennox Dyce.
As she knocked lightly at the front door, the old kid glove came loose in her hand—an omen! One glance up and down the street to see that no one noticed her, and then she slipped it in her pocket, with a guilty countenance. She was not young, at least she was not in her 'teens, but young enough to do a thing like that for luck and her liking of Daniel Dyce. Yet her courage failed her, and when Kate came to the door the first thing she handed to her was the glove.
“It fell off,” she said. “I hope it means that it's no longer needed. And this is a little thing for Miss Lennox, Kate; you will give her it with my compliments. I hear there's an improvement?”