“My stars!” said Kate.
“And Auntie Bell says a lot think it’s not knowing any Scotch language and pretending you never took a tousy tea.”
“I think,” said Kate, “we’ll never mind refining; it’s an awful bother.”
“But every lady must be refined,” said Bud. “Ailie prosists in that.”
“I don’t care,” said the maid; “I’m not particular about being very much of a lady,—I’ll maybe never have the jewellery for it,—but I would like to be a sort of lady on the Sundays, when Charles is at home. I’m not hurryin’ you, my dear, but—but when do we start the writin’?” and she yawned in a way that said little for the interest of Professor Bud’s opening lecture.
Whereupon Bud explained that in a systematic course of education reading came first, and the best reading was Shakespeare, who was truly ennobling to the human mind. She brought in Auntie Ailie’s Shakespeare, and sat upon the fender, and plunged Kate at once into some queer society at Elsinore. But, bless you! nothing came of it: Kate fell asleep, and woke to find the fire cold and the child entranced with Hamlet.
“Oh dear! it’s a slow job getting your education,” she said pitifully, “and all this time there’s my dear Charles waiting for a letter!”
CHAPTER XVI.
“I canna be bothered with that Shakespeare,” Kate cried hopelessly, after many days of him; “the man’s a mournin’ thing! Could he not give us something cheery, with ‘Come, all ye boys!’ in it, the same as the trawlers sing in Colonsay? There was far more fun last week in the penny Horner.”
So Bud dipped in the bottomless well of knowledge again and scooped up Palgrave’s ‘Golden Treasury,’ and splashed her favourite lyrics at the servant’s feet. Kate could not stand the ‘Golden Treasury’ either; the songs were nearly all so lamentable they would make a body greet. Bud assured her on the best authority that the sweetest songs were those that told of saddest thought, but Kate said that might be right enough for gentry who had no real troubles of their own, but they weren’t the thing at all for working folk. What working folk required were songs with tunes to them, and choruses that you could tramp time to with your feet. History, too, was as little to her taste; it was all incredible,—the country could never have kept up so many kings and queens. But she liked geography, for the map enabled her to keep an eye on Charles as he went from port to port, where letters in her name, but still the work of Lennox, would be waiting for him.