“'Oh, Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling;
Oh, Charlie is my darling, the young marineer.'
After this I'll encourage only sailors. Bud, dear, get me a nice, clean sailor. But I stipulate that he must be more discriminating with his capitals, and know that the verb must agree with its nominative, and not be quite so much confused in his geography.”
“You're not angry with me, aunt?” said Bud, in a tone of great relief, with the bloom coming back. “Was it very, very wicked?”
“Pooh!” said Ailie. “If that's wicked, where's our Mr. Shakespeare? Oh, child! child! you are my own heart's treasure. I thought a girl called Alison I used to know long ago was long since dead and done with, and here she's to the fore yet, daft as ever, and her name is Lennox Dyce.”
“No, it wasn't Lennox wrote that letter,” said Bud; “it was Winifred Wallace, and oh, my! she's a pretty tough proposition. You're quite, quite sure it wasn't fibbing.”
“No more than Cinderella's fibbing,” said her aunt, and flourished the letter in the face of Dan, who she saw was going to enter some dissent. “Behold, Dan Dyce, the artist b-r-r-rain! Calls sailor sweethearts from the vasty deep, and they come obedient to her bidding. Spise and perils, Dan, and the golden horn a trifle out of its latitude, and the darling boy that's always being drove from home. One thing you overlooked in the boy, Bud—the hectic flush. I'm sure Kate would have liked a touch of the hectic flush in him.”
But Bud was still contrite, thinking of the servant. “She was so set upon a letter from her Charles,” she explained, “and now she'll have to know that I was joshing her. Perhaps I shouldn't say joshing, Auntie Ailie—I s'pose it's slang.”
“It is,” said her aunt, “and most unlady-like; let us call it pulling her le—let us call it—oh, the English language! I'll explain it all to Kate, and that will be the end of it.”
“Kate'd be dre'ffle rattled to talk about love to a grown-up lady,” said Bud, on thinking. “I'd best go in and explain it all myself.”
“Very well,” said Auntie Ailie; so Bud went into the house and through the lobby to the kitchen.