The Daft Days. Munro Neil

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      “Pretty spry, thank you. Have you been there?”

      “Me!” cried Kate, with her bosom heaving at the very thought. Then her Highland vanity came to her rescue. “No,” she said, “I have not been exactly what you might call altogether there, but I had a cousin that started for Australia, and got the length of Paisley. It’ll be a big place America? Put butter on it.”

      “The United States of America are bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by the Pacific, on the south by Mexico and the Gulf, and on the north by an imaginary line called Canada. The State of New York alone is as large as England,” said Bud glibly, repeating a familiar lesson.

      “What a size!” cried Kate. “Take another of them brown biscuits. Scotland’s not slack neither for size; there’s Glasgow and Oban, and Colonsay and Stornoway. There’ll not be hills in America?’

      “There’s no hills, just mountains,” said Bud. “The chief mountain ranges are the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. They’re about the biggest mountains in the world.”

      “Talking about big things, look at the big pennyworth of milk we get here,” said Kate, producing a can: it was almost the last ditch of her national pride.

      The child looked gravely into the can, and then glanced shrewdly at the maid.

      “It isn’t a pennyworth,” said she sharply, “it’s twopence worth.”

      “My stars! how did you know that?” said Kate, much taken aback.

      “’Cause you’re bragging. Think I don’t know when anybody’s bragging?” said Bud. “And when a body brags about a place or anything, they zaggerate, and just about double things.”

      “You’re not canny,” said Kate, thrusting the milk-can back hastily on the kitchen dresser. “Don’t spare the butter on your biscuit. They tell me there’s plenty of money in America. I would not wonder, eh?”

      “Why, everybody’s got money to throw at the birds there,” said Bud, with some of the accent as well as the favourite phrase of Jim Molyneux.

      “They have little to do; forbye, it’s cruelty. Mind you, there’s plenty of money here too; your uncle has a desperate lot of it. He was wanting to go away to America and bring you home whenever he heard – whenever he heard – Will you not try another of them biscuits? It will do you no harm.”

      “I know,” said Bud gravely, – “whenever he heard about my father being dead.”

      “I think we’re sometimes very stupid, us from Colonsay,” said the maid regretfully. “I should have kept my mouth shut about your father. Take two biscuits, my dear; or maybe you would rather have short-cake. Yes, he was for going there and then – even if it cost a pound, I daresay, – but changed his mind when he heard yon man Molyneux was bringing you.”

      Footles, snug in the child’s lap, shared the biscuits and barked for more.

      said Bud, burying her head in his mane.

      “Good Lord! did you make that yourself, or just keep mind of it?” asked the astounded Kate.

      “I made it just right here,” said Bud coolly. “Didn’t you know I could make poetry? Why, you poor perishing soul, I’m just a regular wee – wee whitterick at poetry! It goes sloshing round in my head, and it’s simply pie for me to make it. Here’s another —

      I just dash them off. I guess I’ll have to get up bright and early to-morrow and touch that one up some. Mostly you can’t make them good the first try, and then you’re bound to go all over them from the beginning and put the good in here and there. That’s art, Jim says. He knew an artist who’d finish a picture with everything quite plain about it, and then say, ‘Now for the Art!’ and fuzz it all with a hard brush.”

      “My stars! what things you know!” exclaimed the maid. “You’re clever – tremendous clever! What’s your age?”

      “I was born mighty well near ten years ago,” said Bud, as if she were a centenarian.

      Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever, though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that. Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think herself anything out of the ordinary. Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common enough with Young America. But Bud, from Maryfield to her uncle’s door, had been a “caution” to the plainly admiring mail-driver; a kind of fairy princess to Wanton Wully Oliver and his wife; the surprise of her aunts had been only half concealed, and here was the maid in an undisguised enchantment! The vanity of ten-year-old was stimulated; for the first time in her life she felt decidedly superior.

      “It was very brave of me to come all this way in a ship at ten years old,” she proceeded.

      “I once came to Oban along with a steamer myself,” said Kate, “but och, that’s nothing, for I knew a lot of the drovers. Just fancy you coming from America! Were you not lonely?”

      “I was dre’ffle lonely,” said Bud, who, in fact, had never known a moment’s dullness across the whole Atlantic. “There was I leaving my native land, perhaps never to set eyes on its shores evermore, and coming to a far country I didn’t know the least thing about. I was leaving all my dear young friends, and the beautiful Mrs Molyneux, and her faithful dog Dodo, and – ” here she squeezed a tear from her eyes, and stopped to think of circumstances even more touching.

      “My poor wee hen!” cried Kate, distressed. “Don’t you greet, and I’ll buy you something.”

      “And I didn’t know what sort of uncle and aunties they might be here, – whether they’d be cruel and wicked or not, or whether they’d keep me or not. Little girls most always have cruel uncles and aunties – you can see that in the books.”

      “You were awful stupid about that bit of it,” said the maid emphatically. “I’m sure anybody could have told you about Mr Dyce and his sisters.”

      “And then it was so stormy,” proceeded Bud quickly, in search of more moving considerations. “I made a poem about that too, – I just dashed it off; the first verse goes —

      but I forget the rest, ’cept that

      The waves were mountains high, and whirled over the deck, and – ”

      “My goodness, you would get all wet!” said СКАЧАТЬ