“But—” hesitated Miss Jean.
“Still—” more hesitatingly said her sister, and then there was a long pause.
“Oh, to the mischief!” said Mr Dyce to himself, then took off his hat again, said “Good afternoon,” and turned to his door.
He was met by Ailie in the lobby; she had seen him from a window speaking to the two Miss Duffs. “What were they saying to you?” she asked with more curiosity in her manner than was customary.
“Nothing at all,” said Mr Dyce. “They just stood and cooed. I’m not sure that a doo-cot is the best place to bring up an eagle in. How did Bud get on with them at school to-day?”
“So far as I can make out, she did not get on at all; she seems to have demoralised the school, and driven the Miss Duffs into hysterics, and she left of her own accord and came home an hour before closing-time. And—and she’s not going back!”
Mr Dyce stood a moment in amazement, then rubbed his hands gleefully. “I’m glad to hear it,” said he. “The poor birdies between them could not summon up courage to tell me what was wrong. I’m sorry for them; if she’s not going back, we’ll send them down a present”
CHAPTER IX.
That the child should have gone to the dame school at all was due to her Auntie Bell. From the first Miss Ailie had been dubious of the seminary, but Bell was terribly domineering; in fact, was neither to hold nor bind, and the doo-cot it bode to be. A product herself of the old dame school in the spacious days of Barbara Mushet, whose pupils in white-seam sewing and Italian hand were nowadays married to the best, and notable as housewives, she deemed it still the only avenue to the character and skill that keep those queer folk, men, when they’re married, by their own fire-ends. As for Daniel Dyce, he was, I fear, indifferent how Bud came by her schooling, having a sort of philosophy that the gate of gifts is closed on us the day we’re born, and that the important parts of the curriculum, good or bad, are picked up like a Scots or Hielan’ accent, someway in the home.
So Ailie had gone reluctant to the Misses Duff and told them that on the morrow the child would start in their academy. They currookity-cooed at the prospect, put past their crocheting, brought out their celebrated silver spoons, and made of the afternoon tea a banquet with the aid of a seed-cake hurriedly brought from P. & A. MacGlashan’s. Their home was like a stall in a bazaar and smelt of turpentine. Ailie, who loved wide spaces, sat cramped between a laden what-not and a white-enamelled spinning-wheel, the feathers of her hat colliding with a fretwork bracket on the wall behind her chair, and thinking not unkindly of the creatures, wished that she could give them a good shaking. Oh! they were so prim, pernickety, and hopelessly in all things wrong! She was not very large herself, for stature, but in their company she felt gigantic. And oddly there rose in her, too, a sense of gladness that she was of a newer kind of women than those gentle slaves, prisoned in their primness, manacled by stupid old conceits. She was glad she was free, that her happy hours were not so wasted in futilities, that she saw farther, that she knew no social fears, that custom had not crushed her soul, and yet she someway liked and pitied them.