On Miss Minto of the crimson cloak, who kept her deaf ear to the sisters and her good one to their brother, and laughed heartily at all his little jokes even before they were half made, or looked at him with large, soft, melting eyes and her lips apart, which her glass had told her was an aspect ravishing. The sisters smiled at each other when she had gone and looked comically at Dan, but he, poor man, saw nothing but just that Mary Minto was a good deal fatter than she used to be.
On the doctor’s two sisters, late come from a farm in the country, marvellously at ease so long as the conversation abode in gossip about the neighbours, but in a silent terror when it rose from persons to ideas, as it once had done when Lady Anne had asked them what they thought of didactic poetry, and one of them said it was a thing she was very fond of, and then fell in a swound.
On the banker man, the teller, who was in hopeless love with Ailie, as was plain from the way he devoted himself to Bell.
On Mr Dyce’s old retired partner, Mr Cleland, who smelt of cloves and did not care for tea.
On P. & A. MacGlashan, who had come in specially to see if the stranger knew his brother Albert, who, he said, was “in a Somewhere-ville in Manitoba.”
On the Provost and his lady, who were very old, and petted each other when they thought themselves unobserved.
On the soft, kind, simple, content and happy ladies lately married.
On the others who would like to be.
Yes, Bud had her eye on them all. They never guessed how much they entertained her as they genteelly sipped their tea, or wine, or ginger cordial,—the women of them,—or coughed a little too artificially over the New Year glass,—the men.
“Wee Pawkie, that’s what she is—just Wee Pawkie!” said the Provost when he got out, and so far it summed up everything.