“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud composedly. “I’m her. It’s my—it’s my poetry name. ‘Bud Dyce’ wouldn’t be any use for the magazines; it’s not dinky enough.”
“Bless me, child, you don’t tell me you write poetry for the magazines?” said her astonished aunt.
“No,” said Bud, “but I’ll be pretty liable to when I’m old enough to wear specs. That’s if I don’t go on the stage.”
“On the stage!” exclaimed Ailie, full of wild alarm.
“Yes,” said the child, “Mrs Molyneux said I was a born actress.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” said Aunt Ailie, staring into vacancy.
CHAPTER VIII.
Daniel Dyce had an office up the street at the windy corner facing the Cross, with two clerks in it and a boy who docketed letters and ran errands. Once upon a time there was a partner,—Cleland & Dyce the firm had been,—but Cleland was a shy and melancholy man whose only hours of confidence and gaiety came to him after injudicious drams. ’Twas patent to all how his habits seized him, but nobody mentioned it except in a whisper, sometimes as a kind of little accident, for in everything else he was the perfect gentleman, and here we never like to see the honest gentry down. All men liked Colin Cleland, and many would share his jovial hours who took their law business elsewhere than to Cleland & Dyce. That is the way of the world, too; most men keep their jovial-money in a different pocket from where they keep their cash. The time came when it behoved Mr Cleland to retire. Men who knew the circumstances said Dan Dyce paid rather dear for that retirement, and indeed it might be so in the stricter way of commerce, but the lawyer was a Christian who did not hang up his conscience in the “piety press” with his Sunday clothes. He gave his partner a good deal more than he asked.
“I hope you’ll come in sometimes and see me whiles at night and join in a glass of toddy,” said Mr Cleland.
“I’ll certainly come and see you,” said Dan Dyce. And then he put his arm affectionately through that of his old partner, and added, “I would—I would ca’ canny wi’ the toddy, Colin,” coating the pill in sweet and kindly Scots. Thank God, we have two tongues in our place, and can speak the bitter truth in terms that show humility and love, and not the sense of righteousness, dictate.