It was not any wonder, for other lads as deliberate and gawky as himself had bothered her all the week with the same demand. Hands! hands! you would think, said she, they were all at the door wi' a bunch of finger-rings bound to marry her right or wrong, even if they had to put them on her nose. Of course she knew finely what they were after—she knew that each blate wooer wanted a partner for the ball, and could only clinch the compact with a pair of gloves; but just at present she was not in trim for balls, and landsmen had no interest for her since her heart was on the brine. Some of them boldly guessed at seven-and-a-halfs without inquiry, and were dumfoundered that she would not look at them; and one had acquired a pair of roomy white cotton ones with elastic round the top—a kind of glove that plays a solemn part at burials, having come upon Miss Minto when her stock of festive kids was done. They waylaid Kate coming with her basket from the mangle—no, thanky, she was needing no assistance; or she would find them scratching at the window after dark; or hear them whistling, whistling, whistling—oh, so softly!—in the close. There are women rich and nobly born who think that they are fortunate, and yet, poor dears! they never heard the whistling in the close. Kate's case was terrible! By day, in her walks abroad in her new merino, not standing so much as a wink, or paying any heed to a “Hey, Kate, what's your hurry?” she would blast them with a flashing eye. By night, hearing their signals, she showed them what she thought of them by putting to the shutters. “Dir-r-rt!” was what she called them, with her nose held high and every “r” a rattle on the lug for them—this to Bud, who could not understand the new distaste Kate had to the other sex. “Just dirt below my feet! I think myself far, far above them.”
One evening Mr. Dyce came in from his office and quizzed her in the lobby. “Kate,” said he, “I'm not complaining, but I wish you would have mercy on my back door. There's not a night I have come home of late but if I look up the close I find a lad or two trying to bite his way into you through the door. Can you no' go out, like a good lass, and talk at them in the Gaelic—it would serve them right! If you don't, steps will have to be taken with a strong hand, as you say yourself. What are they wanting? Can this—can this be love?”
She ran to the sanctuary of the kitchen, plumped in a chair, and was swept away in a storm of laughter and tears that frightened Bud, who waited there a return of her aunts from the Women's Guild. “Why, Kate, what's the matter?” she asked.
“Your un—your un—un—uncle's blaming me for harboring all them chaps about the door, and says it's l-l-love—oh, dear! I'm black affronted.”
“You needn't go into hysterics about a little thing like that,” said Bud. “Uncle Dan's tickled to death to see so many beaux you have, wanting you to that ball; he said last night he had to walk between so many of them waiting for you there in front, it was like shassaying up the middle in the 'Haymakers'.”
“It's not hysterics, nor hersterics, either,” said the maid; “and oh, I wish I was out of here and back in the isle of Colonsay!”
Yes, Colonsay became a great place then. America, where the prospects for domestics used to be so fascinating, had lost its glamour since Bud had told her the servants there were as discontented as in Scotland, and now her native isle beat paradise. She would talk by the hour, at a washing, of its charms, of which the greatest seemed to be the absence of public lamps and the way you heard the wind! Colonsay seemed to be a place where folk were always happy, meeting in one another's houses, dancing, singing, courting, marrying, getting money every now and then from sons or wealthy cousins in Australia. Bud wondered if they never did any work in Colonsay. Yes, yes, indeed! Kate could assure her, they worked quite often out in Colonsay—in the winter-time.
But one thing greatly troubled her—she must write back at once to the only Charles, who so marvellously had come to her through Bud's unconscious offices, and she knew she could never sustain the standard of hand-write, spelling, and information Bud had established in her first epistle. Her position was lamentable. It was all very well to be the haughty madam on the street, and show herself a wise like, modest gyurl, but what was that without the education? C. Maclean was a man of education—he got it on the yats among the gentry, he had travelled all the world!
Kate's new airs, that caused such speculation in the town, were—now let me tell you—all the result of a dash at education. She wanted to be able to write a letter as good as Bud in a week or two, and had engaged the child to tutor her.
Bud never found a more delicious game in all her life, and it hurried her convalescence, for to play it properly she must be Aunt Ailie, and Aunt Ailie was always so strong and well.