And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back he was known as Cheery Dan.
“Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the water. It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which, men never age, comes from high mountain bens.
“That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers. “I’ll see ye far enough first!” And contented himself with a slighter wash than usual, and shaving. As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was
“Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,”
with not much tone but a great conviction,—a tall, lean, clean-shaven man of over fifty, with a fine long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen grey eyes, and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands into them. And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he went upstairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a pencilled note, in which he wrote—
A New Year’s Day Present
for a Good Boy
from
An Uncle who does not like Cats.
He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was seen the King’s highway. “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself. “They have made an extraordinary job of it. Very nice indeed, but just a shade ladylike. A stirring boy would prefer fewer fal-lals.”
There was little indeed to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover’s-knots, its bower-like bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of pot-pourri and lavender. A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when she was in Miss Mushet’s seminary, hung over the mantelpiece enjoining all beholders to
Watch and Pray.
Mr Dyce put both hands into his trousers pockets, bent a little, and heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter. “Man’s whole duty, according to Bell Dyce,” he said, “‘Watch and Pray’; but they do not need to have the lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I’ll warrant. Yon’s the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the prayer. ‘Watch and Pray’—h’m! It should be Watch or Pray—it clearly cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time.”