The Daft Days. Munro Neil

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СКАЧАТЬ myself again, and had not a living to make, I would leave out a good many things the old dominie thought needful. What was yon awful thing again? – mensuration. To sleep well and eat anything, fear the face of nobody in bashfulness, to like dancing, and be able to sing a good bass or tenor, – that’s no bad beginning in the art of life. There’s a fellow Brodie yonder in the kirk choir who seems to me happier than a king when he’s getting in a fine boom-boom of bass to the tune Devizes; he puts me all out at my devotions on a Lord’s day with envy of his accomplishment.”

      “What! envy too!” said Alison. “Murder, theft, and envy – what a brother!”

      “Yes, envy too, the commonest and ugliest of our sins,” said Mr Dyce. “I never met man or woman who lacked it, though many never know they have it. I hope the great thing is to be ashamed to feel it, for that’s all that I can boast of myself. When I was a boy at the school there was another boy, a great friend of my own, was chosen to compete for a prize I was thought incapable of taking, so that I was not on the list. I envied him to hatred – almost; and saying my bits of prayers at night I prayed that he might win. I felt ashamed of my envy, and set the better Daniel Dyce to wrestle with the Daniel Dyce who was not quite so big. It was a sair fight, I can assure you. I found the words of my prayer and my wishes considerably at variance – ”

      “Like me and ‘Thy will be done’ when we got the word of brother William,” said Bell.

      “But my friend – dash him! – got the prize. I suppose God took a kind of vizzy down that night and saw the better Dan Dyce was doing his desperate best against the other devil’s-Dan, who mumbled the prayer on the chance He would never notice. There was no other way of accounting for it, for that confounded boy got the prize, and he was not half so clever as myself, and that was Alick Maitland. Say nothing about envy, Ailie; I fear we all have some of it until we are perhaps well up in years, and understand that between the things we envy and the luck we have there is not much to choose. If I got all I wanted, myself, the world would have to be much enlarged. It does not matter a docken leaf. Well, as I was saying when my learned friend interrupted me, I would have this young fellow healthy and happy and interested in everything. There are men I see who would mope and weary in the middle of a country fair – God help them! I want to stick pins in them sometimes and make them jump. They take as little interest in life as if they were undertakers.”

      “Hoots! nobody could weary in this place at any rate,” said Bell briskly. “Look at the life and gaiety that’s in it. Talk about London! I can hardly get my sleep at night quite often with the traffic. And such things are always happening in it – births and marriages, engagements and tea-parties, new patterns at Miss Minto’s, two coaches in the day, and sometimes somebody doing something silly that will keep you laughing half the week.”

      “But it’s not quite so lively as Chicago,” said Mr Dyce. “There has not been a man shot in this neighbourhood since the tinker kind of killed his wife (as the fiscal says) with the pistol. You’ll have heard of him? When the man was being brought on the scaffold for it, and the minister asked if he had anything to say before he suffered the extreme penalty of the law, ‘All I have got to say,’ he answered, starting to greet, ‘is that this’ll be an awful lesson to me.’”

      “That’s one of your old ones,” said Bell; but even an old one was welcome in Dyce’s house on New Year’s day, and the three of them laughed at the story as if it had newly come from London in Ailie’s precious ‘Punch.’ The dog fell into a convulsion of merriment, as if inward chuckles tormented him – as queer a dog as ever was, neither Scotch terrier nor Skye, Dandy Dinmont nor Dachshund, but just dog, – dark wire-haired behind, short ruddy-haired in front, a stump tail, a face so fringed you could only see its eyes when the wind blew. Mr Dyce put down his hand and scratched it behind the ear. “Don’t laugh, Footles,” he said. “I would not laugh if I were you, Footles, – it’s just an old one. Many a time you’ve heard it before, sly rogue. One would think you wanted to borrow money.” If you could hear Dan Dyce speak to his dog, you would know at once he was a bachelor: only bachelors and bairnless men know dogs.

      “I hope and trust he’ll have decent clothes to wear, and none of their American rubbish,” broke in Bell, back to her nephew again. “It’s all nonsense about the bashed hat; but you can never tell what way an American play-actor will dress a bairn: there’s sure to be something daft-like about him – a starry waistcoat or a pair of spats, – and we must make him respectable like other boys in the place.”

      “I would say Norfolk suits, the same as the banker’s boys,” suggested Ailie. “I think the banker’s boys always look so smart and neat.”

      “Anything with plenty of pockets in it,” said Mr Dyce. “At the age of ten a boy would prefer his clothes to be all pockets. By George! an entire suit of pockets, with a new penny in every pocket for luck, would be a great treat,” – and he chuckled at the idea, making a mental note of it for a future occasion.

      “Stuff and nonsense!” cried Bell emphatically, for here she was in her own department. “The boy is going to be a Scotch boy. I’ll have the kilt on him, or nothing.”

      “The kilt!” said Mr Dyce.

      “The kilt!” cried Ailie.

      Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

      It was a loud knocking at the front door. They stopped the talk to listen, and they heard the maid go along the lobby from the kitchen. When she opened the door, there came in the cheerful discord of the street, the sound of a pounding drum, the fifes still busy, the orange-hawker’s cry, but over all they heard her put her usual interrogation to visitors, no matter what their state or elegance.

      “Well, what is’t?” she asked, and though they could not see her, they knew she would have the door just a trifle open, with her shoulder against it, as if she was there to repel some chieftain of a wild invading clan. Then they heard her cry, “Mercy on me!” and her footsteps hurrying to the parlour door. She threw it open, and stood with some one behind her.

      “What do you think? Here’s brother William’s wean!” she exclaimed in a gasp.

      “My God! Where is he?” cried Bell, the first to find her tongue. “He’s no hurt, is he?”

      “It’s no’ a him at all – it’s a her!” shrieked Kate, throwing up her arms in consternation, and stepping aside she gave admission to a little girl.

      CHAPTER IV

      The orphan child of William and Mary Dyce, dead, the pair of them, in the far-off city of Chicago, stepped quite serenely into an astounded company. There were three Dyces in a row in front of her, and the droll dog Footles at her feet, and behind her, Kate, the servant, wringing her apron as if it had newly come from the washing-boyne, her bosom heaving. Ten eyes (if you could count the dog’s, hidden by his tousy fringe) stared at the child a moment, and any ordinary child would have been much put out; but this was no common child, or else she felt at once the fond kind air of home. I will give you her picture in a sentence or two. She was black-haired, dark and quick in the eye, not quite pale but olive in complexion, with a chin she held well up, and a countenance neither shy nor bold, but self-possessed. Fur on her neck and hood (Jim Molyneux’s last gift), and a muff that held her arms up to the elbows, gave her an aspect of picture-book cosiness that put the maid in mind at once of the butcher’s Christmas calendar.

      It was the dog that first got over the astonishment: he made a dive at her with little friendly growls, and rolled on his back at her feet, to paddle with his four paws in the air, which was his way of showing he was in the key for fun.

      With a cry of glee she threw the muff on the floor and plumped beside him, put her arms about his body and СКАЧАТЬ