The Daft Days. Munro Neil

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Bell, coming to herself with a start, and, pouncing on her, she lifted her to her feet. Ailie sank on her hands and knees and stared in the visitor’s face. “The kilt, indeed!” said Mr Dyce to himself. “This must be a warlock wean, for if it has not got the voice and sentiment of Wanton Wully Oliver I’m losing my wits.”

      “Tell me this, quick, are you Lennox Dyce?” said Bell all trembling, devouring the little one with her eyes.

      “Well, I just guess I am,” replied the child calmly, with the dog licking her chin. “Say, are you Auntie Bell?” and this time there was no doubt about the American accent. Up went her mouth to them to be kissed, composedly: they lost no time, but fell upon her, Ailie half in tears because at once she saw below the childish hood so much of brother William.

      “Lennox, dear, you should not speak like that; who in all the world taught you to speak like that?” said Bell, unwrapping her.

      “Why, I thought that was all right here,” said the stranger. “That’s the way the bell-man speaks.”

      “Bless me! Do you know the bell-man?” cried Miss Dyce.

      “I rang his old bell for him this morning – didn’t you hear me?” was the surprising answer. “He’s a nice man; he liked me. I’d like him too if he wasn’t so tired. He was too tired to speak sense; all he would say was, ‘I’ve lost the place; let us pause and consider,’ and ‘Try another egg.’ I said I would give him a quarter if he’d let me ring his bell, and he said he’d let me do it for nothing, and my breakfast besides. ‘You’ll not leave this house till I boil an egg for you’ – that’s what he said, and the poor man was so tired and his legs were dreff’le poorly!” Again her voice was the voice of Wully Oliver; the sentiment, as the Dyces knew, was the slogan of his convivial hospitality.

      “The kilt, indeed!” said Mr Dyce, feeling extraordinarily foolish, and, walking past them, he went upstairs and hurriedly put the pea-sling in his pocket.

      When he came down, Young America was indifferently pecking at her second breakfast with Footles on her knee, an aunt on either side of her, and the maid Kate with a tray in her hand for excuse, open-mouthed, half in at the door.

      “Well, as I was saying, Jim – that’s my dear Mr Molyneux, you know – got busy with a lot of the boys once he landed off that old ship, and so he said, ‘Bud, this is the – the – justly cel’brated Great Britain; I know by the boys; they’re so lonely when they’re by themselves; I was ’prehensive we might have missed it in the dark, but it’s all right.’ And next day he bought me this muff and things and put me on the cars – say, what funny cars you have! – and said ‘Good-bye, Bud; just go right up to Maryfield, and change there. If you’re lost anywhere on the island just holler out good and loud, and I’ll hear!’ He pretended he wasn’t caring, but he was pretty blinky ’bout the eyes, and I saw he wasn’t anyway gay, so I never let on the way I felt myself.”

      She suggested the tone and manner of the absent Molyneux in a fashion to put him in the flesh before them. Kate almost laughed loud out at the oddity of it; Ailie and her brother were astounded at the cleverness of the mimicry; Bell clenched her hands, and said for the second time that day, “Oh! that Molyneux, if I had him!”

      “He’s a nice man, Jim. I can’t tell you how I love him – and he gave me heaps of candy at the depot,” proceeded the unabashed new-comer. “‘Change at Edinburgh,’ he said; ‘you’ll maybe have time to run into the Castle and see the Duke; give him my love, but not my address. When you get to Maryfield hop out slick and ask for your uncle Dyce.’ And then he said, did Jim, ‘I hope he ain’t a loaded Dyce, seein’ he’s Scotch, and it’s the festive season.’”

      “The adorable Jim!” said Ailie. “We might have known.”

      “I got on all right,” proceeded the child, “but I didn’t see the Duke of Edinburgh; there wasn’t time, and uncle wasn’t at Maryfield, but a man put me on his mail carriage and drove me right here. He said I was a caution. My! it was cold. Say, is it always weather like this here?”

      “Sometimes it’s like this, and sometimes it’s just ordinary Scotch weather,” said Mr Dyce, twinkling at her through his spectacles.

      “I was dreff’le sleepy in the mail, and the driver wrapped me up, and when I came into this town in the dark he said, ‘Walk right down there and rap at the first door you see with a brass man’s hand for a knocker; that’s Mr Dyce’s house.’ I came down, and there wasn’t any brass man, but I saw the knocker. I couldn’t reach up to it, so when I saw a man going into the church with a lantern in his hand, I went up to him and pulled his coat. I knew he’d be all right going into a church. He told me he was going to ring the bell, and I said I’d give him a quarter – oh, I said that before. When the bell was finished he took me to his house for luck – that was what he said – and he and his wife got right up and boiled eggs. They said I was a caution, too, and they went on boiling eggs, and I couldn’t eat more than two and a white though I tried and tried. I think I slept a good while in their house; I was so fatigued, and they were all right; they loved me, I could see that. And I liked them some myself, though they must be mighty poor, for they haven’t any children. Then the bell-man took me to this house, and rapped at the door, and went away pretty quick for him before anybody came to it, because he said he was plain-soled – what’s plain-soled anyhow? – and wasn’t a lucky first-foot on a New Year’s morning.”

      “It beats all, that’s what it does!” cried Bell. “My poor wee whitterick! Were ye no’ frightened on the sea?”

      “Whitterick, whitterick,” repeated the child to herself, and Ailie, noticing, was glad that this was certainly not a diffy. Diffies never interest themselves in new words; diffies never go inside themselves with a new fact as a dog goes under a table with a bone.

      “Were you not frightened when you were on the sea?” repeated Bell.

      “No,” said the child promptly. “Jim was there all right, you see, and he knew all about it. He said, ‘Trust in Providence, and if it’s very stormy, trust in Providence and the Scotch captain.’”

      “I declare! the creature must have some kind of sense in him, too,” said Bell, a little mollified by this compliment to Scotch sea-captains. And all the Dyces fed their eyes upon this wonderful wean that had fallen among them. ’Twas happy in that hour with them; as if in a miracle they had been remitted to their own young years; their dwelling was at long last furnished! She had got into the good graces of Footles as if she had known him all her life.

      “Say, uncle, this is a funny dog,” was her next remark. “Did God make him?”

      “Well – yes, I suppose God did,” said Mr Dyce, taken a bit aback.

      “Well, isn’t He the darndest! This dog beats Mrs Molyneux’s Dodo, and Dodo was a looloo. What sort of a dog is he? Scotch terrier?”

      “Mostly not,” said her uncle, chuckling. “It’s really an improvement on the Scotch terrier. There’s later patents in him, you might say. He’s a sort of mosaic; indeed, when I think of it you might describe him as a pure mosaic dog.”

      “A Mosaic dog!” exclaimed Lennox. “Then he must have come from scriptural parts. Perhaps I’ll get playing with him Sundays. Not playing loud out, you know, but just being happy. I love being happy, don’t you?”

      “It’s my only weakness,” said Mr Dyce emphatically, blinking through his glasses. “The other business men in the town don’t approve of me for it; they call it frivolity. But it comes so easily to me I never charge it in the bills, СКАЧАТЬ