“I don't mean truly, truly battles,” Bud hurried to explain, “but the kind that's the same as a sound of revelry off—no blood, but just a lot of bang. But I s'pose battles are gone out, like iron suits. Then I thought there'd be almost nothing but cataracts and ravines and—and—mountain passes, and here and there a right smart Alick in short trunks and a feather in his hat winding a hunting-horn. I used to think, when I was a little, wee, silly whitterick, that you wound a horn every Saturday night with a key just like a clock; but I've known for years and years it's just blowing. The way father said, and from the things I read, I calc'lated all the folk in Scotland'd hate one another like poison, and start a clan, and go out chasing all the other clans with direful slogans and bagpipes skirling wildly in the genial breeze. And the place would be crowded with lovelorn maidens—that kind with the starched millstones round their necks like Queen Mary always wore. My, it must have been rough on dear old Mary when she fell asleep in church! But it's not a bit like that; it's only like Scotland when I'm in bed, and the wind is loud, and I hear the geese. Then I think of the trees all standing out in the dark and wet, and the hills, too, the way they've done for years and years, and the big, lonely places with nobody in them, not a light even; and I get the croodles and the creeps, for that's Scotland, full of bogies. I think Scotland's stone-dead.”
“It's no more dead than you are yourself,” said Miss Bell, determined ever to uphold her native land. “The cleverest people in the world come from Scotland.”
“So father used to say; but Jim, he said he guessed the cleverer they were the quicker they came. I'm not a bit surprised they make a dash from home when they feel so dead and mopish and think of things and see that road.”
“Road?” said Uncle Dan. “What road?”
“My road,” said the child. “The one I see from my window—oh, how it rises and rises and winds and winds, and it just shrieks on you to come right along and try.”
“Try what?” asked her uncle, curiously.
“I dunno,” said Bud, thinking hard; “Auntie Ailie knows, and I 'spect Auntie Bell knows, too. I can't tell what it is, but I fairly tickle to take a walk along. Other times I fee I'd be mighty afraid to go, but Auntie Ailie says you should always do the things you're afraid to do, for they're most always the only things worth doing.”
Mr. Dyce, scratching the ear of Footles, who begged at the side of his chair, looked over the rims of his glasses and scrutinized the child.
“All roads,” said he, “as you'll find a little later, come to the same dead end, and most of us, though we think we're picking our way, are all the time at the mercy of the School-master, like Geordie Jordon. The only thing that's plain in the present issue is that we're not brisk enough here for Young America. What do you think we should do to make things lively?”
“Hustle,” said Bud. “Why, nobody here moves faster 'n a funeral, and they ought to gallop if they want to keep up with the band.”