“It’s no more dead than you are yourself,” said Miss Bell, determined ever to uphold her native land. “The cleverest people in the world come from Scotland.”
“So father used to say; but Jim, he said he guessed the cleverer they were the quicker they came. I’m not a bit surprised they make a dash from home when they feel so dead and mopish and think of things and see that road.”
“Road?” said Uncle Dan. “What road?”
“My road,” said the child. “The one I see from my window: oh, how it rises and rises and winds and winds, and it just shrieks on you to come right along and try.”
“Try what?” asked her uncle curiously.
“I dunno,” said Bud, thinking hard; “Auntie Ailie knows, and I ’spect Auntie Bell knows too. I can’t tell what it is, but I fairly tickle to take a walk along. Other times I feel I’d be mighty afraid to go, but Auntie Ailie says you should always do the things you’re afraid to do, for they’re most always the only things worth doing.”
Mr Dyce, scratching the ear of Footles, who begged at the side of his chair, looked over the rims of his glasses and scrutinised the child.
“All roads,” said he, “as you’ll find a little later, come to the same dead end, and most of us, though we think we’re picking our way, are all the time at the mercy of the Schoolmaster, like Geordie Jordon. The only thing that’s plain in the present issue is that we’re not brisk enough here for Young America. What do you think we should do to make things lively?”
“Hustle,” said Bud. “Why, nobody here moves faster’n a funeral, and they ought to gallop if they want to keep up with the band.”
“I’m not in a hurry myself,” said her uncle, smiling. “Maybe that’s because I think I’m all the band there is, myself. But if you want to introduce the Chicago system you should start with Mrs Wright’s Italian warehouse down the street,—the poor body’s losing money trying to run her shop on philanthropic principles.”