Aunt Ailie bore down on her to overwhelm her in caresses. “What are you home for already, Bud?” she asked. “It’s not time yet, is it?”
“No,” said Bud, “but I just couldn’t stay any longer. I’d as lief not go back there. The ladies don’t love me. They’re Sunday sort of ladies, and give me pins and needles. They smile and smile, same’s it was done with a glove-stretcher, and don’t love me. They said I was using profound language, and—and they don’t love me. Not the way mother and Mrs Molyneux and you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan and Kate and Footles does. They made goo-goo-eyes at me when I said the least thing. They had all those poor kiddies up on the floor doing their little bits, and they made me read kindergarten poetry—that was the limit! So I just upped and walked.”
The two aunts and Kate stood round her for a moment baffled.
“What’s to be done now?” said Aunt Ailie.
“Tuts!” said Aunt Bell, “give the wean a drink of milk and some bread and butter.”
And so ended Bud’s only term in a dame school.
CHAPTER X.
It was a saying of Daniel Dyce’s that all the world is under one’s own waistcoat. We have a way of spaeing fortunes in the North, when young, in which we count the waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, and say—
Tinker,
Tailor,