“What did you say to him in the last?” asked Kate. “He’s talking there about a poetry, and happy returns of the day.”
Bud confessed she had made a poem for him from his beloved Kate, and had reckoned on fetching a gift of candy by telling him her birthday was on Monday. “But really I’d just as lief have the balsam,” said she, “it’s perfectly lovely; how it nips!”
“It’s not my birthday at all,” said Kate. “My birthday’s always on the second Sunday in September. I was born about the same time as Lady Anne—either a fortnight before or a fortnight after; I forget mysel’ completely which it was, and I daresay so does she.”
“No, but Monday’s my birthday, right enough,” said Bud, “and seeing that we’re sort of loving him in company, I s’posed it would be all the same.”
“So it is, I’m not complainin’,” said the maid. “And now we’ll have to send him something back. What would you recommend?”
They considered many gifts appropriate for a sailor,—sou’-westers, Bible-markers, woollen comforters, and paper-knives, scarf-pins, gloves, and ties. Bud was sure that nothing would delight him like a book about a desert island, but Kate said no, a pipe was just the very ticket—a wooden pipe with silver mountings; the very one to suit was in the window of Mrs Wright’s Italian warehouse.
“What’s an Italian warehouse?” asked the child.
“You have me there!” said Kate, “unless, maybe, her husband was Italian before he went and died on her. ‘Italian Warehouse’ is the only thing that’s on her sign. She sells a thing for almost any price you like to offer, because the Bible says it’s not the thing at all to argy-bargy.”
“I know,” said Bud; “it’s what we call running a business on—on—on philanthropic principles. I’d love to see a body do it. I’ll run out and buy the pipe from Mrs Wright, Kate.”
She departed on her errand down the town, at the other side of the church; and the hours of the forenoon passed, and dinner-time was almost come, and still there was no sign of her returning. Kate would have lost her patience and gone to seek for her, but found so much to interest at the window that she quite forgot her messenger. Something out of the ordinary was happening on the other side of the church. Wanton Wully knew what it was, but of course he was not telling, for he was out as public crier, rousing the town with his hand-bell, and shouting “Notice!” with an air that promised some tremendous tidings; but beyond mysterious words like “bed-rock prices,” which he mumbled from a paper in his hand, there was nothing to show this proclamation differed from the common ones regarding herring at the quay or a sale of delf down-by at John Turner’s corner. “What are ye crying?” they asked him, but being a man with the belief that he had a voice as clear as a concert-singer, he would not condescend to tell them. Only when some one looked across his shoulder and read the paper for himself was it found that a sale described as “Revolutionary” was taking place at the Italian warehouse. Half the town at once went to see what the decent body was up to. Kate saw them hurrying down, and when they came back they were laughing. “What’s the ploy?” she asked a passer-by.