Following on stormy weeks had come an Indian summer, when the world was blessed with Ailie’s idea of Arden weather, that keeps one wood for ever green and glad with company, knows only the rumour of distant ice and rain, and makes men, reading thereof by winter fires, smell fir and feel the breeze on their naked necks and hunger for the old abandoned bed among the brackens. “It is better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak,” was the motto of Daniel Dyce, and though the larks were absent, he would have the little one in the garden long hours of the day. She beiked there like a kitten in the sunlight till her wan cheek bloomed. The robin sang among the apples—pensive a bit for the ear of age, that knows the difference between the voice of spring and autumn—sweet enough for youth that happily does not have an ear for its gallant melancholy; the starlings blew like a dust about the sky; over the garden wall—the only one in the town that wanted broken bottles—far-off hills raised up their heads to keek at the little lassie, who saw from this that the world was big and glorious as ever.

“My! ain’t this fine and clean?” said Bud. “Feels as if Aunt Bell had been up this morning bright and early with a duster.” She was enraptured with the blaze of the nasturtiums, that Bell would aye declare should be the flower of Scotland, for “Indian cress here, or Indian cress there,” as she would say, “they’re more like Scots than any flower I ken. The poorer the soil the better they thrive, and they come to gold where all your fancy flowers would rot for the want of nutriment. Nutriment! give them that in plenty and you’ll see a bonny display of green and no’ much blossom. The thing’s a parable—the worst you can do with a Scotsman, if you want the best from him, ’s to feed him ower rich. Look at Captain Consequence; never the same since he was aboard—mulligatawny even-on in India; a score of servant-men, and never a hand’s-turn for himself,—all the blossom from that kind of Indian cress is on his nose.”

“Lands sake! I am glad I’m not dead,” said Bud, with all her body tingling as she heard the bees buzz in the nasturtium bells and watched the droll dog Footles snap at the butterflies.

“It’s not a bad world, one way and the other,” said Miss Bell, knitting at her side; “it would have been a hantle worse if we had had the making o’t. But here we have no continuing city, and yonder—if the Lord had willed—you would have gone sweeping through the gates of the new Jerusalem.”

“Sweeping!” said the child. “I can’t sweep for keeps; Kate won’t give me a chance to learn. But anyhow I guess this is a good enough world for a miserable sinner like me.”

Mr Dyce, who had carried her, chair and all, into the garden, though she could have walked there, chuckled at this confession.

“Dan,” said Bell, “think shame of yourself! You make the child light-minded.”

“The last thing I would look for in women is consistency,” said he, “and I daresay that’s the way I like them. What is it Ailie quotes from Emerson? ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’—that kind of goblin never scared a woman in the dark yet. But surely you’ll let me laugh when I think of you chiding her gladness in life to-day, when I mind of you last week so desperate throng among the poultices.”

“I’m for none of your lawyer arguments,” said Bell, trying in vain to gag herself with a knitting-pin from one of the Shetland shawls she had been turning out for years with the hope that some day she could keep one for herself. “It might have been that ‘she pleased God and was beloved of Him, so that, living among sinners’—among sinners, Dan,—‘she was translated. Yea, speedily was she taken away, lest that wickedness should alter her understanding, or deceit beguile her soul.’”

“I declare if I haven’t forgot my peppermints!” said her brother, quizzing her, and clapping his outside pockets. “A consoling text! I have no doubt at all you could prelect upon it most acceptably, but confess that you are just as glad as me that there’s the like of Dr Brash.”

“I like the Doc,” the child broke in, with most of this dispute beyond her; “he’s a real cuddley man. Every time he rapped at my chest I wanted to cry ‘Come in.’ Say, isn’t he slick with a poultice!”

“He was slick enough to save your life, my dear,” said Uncle Dan soberly. “I’m almost jealous of him now, for Bud’s more his than mine.”

“Did he make me better?” asked the child.

“Under God. I’m thinking we would have been in a bonny habble wanting him.”

“I don’t know what a bonny habble is from Adam,” said Bud, “but I bet the Doc wasn’t everything: there was that prayer, you know.”

“Eh?” exclaimed her uncle sharply.

“Oh, I heard you, Uncle Dan,” said Bud, with a sly look up at him. “I wasn’t sleeping really that night, and I was awful liable to have tickled you on the bald bit of your head. I never saw it before. I could have done it easily if it wasn’t that I was so tired; and my breath was so sticky that I had to keep on yanking it, just; and you were so solemn and used such dre’ffle big words. I didn’t tickle you, but I thought I’d help you pray, and so I kept my eyes shut and said a bit myself. Say, I want to tell you something,”—she stammered, with a shaking lip. “I felt real mean when you talked about a sinless child; of course you didn’t know, but it was—it wasn’t true. I know why I was taken ill: it was a punishment for telling fibs to Kate. I was mighty frightened that I’d die before I had a chance to tell you.”

“Fibs!” said Mr Dyce seriously. “That’s bad. And I’m loth to think it of you, for it’s the only sin that does not run in the family, and the one I most abominate.”

Bell stopped her knitting, quite distressed, and the child lost her new-come bloom. “I didn’t mean it for fibs,” she said, “and it wasn’t anything I said, but a thing I did when I was being Winifred Wallace. Kate wanted me to write a letter—”

“Who to?” demanded Auntie Bell.

“It was to—it was to—oh, I daren’t tell you,” said Bud, distressed. “It wouldn’t be fair, and maybe she’ll tell you herself, if you ask her. Anyhow I wrote the letter for her, and seeing she wasn’t getting any answer to it, and was just looney for one, and I was mighty keen myself, I turned Winny on, and wrote one. I went out and posted it that dre’ffle wet night you had the party, and I never let on to Kate, so she took it for a really really letter from the person we sent the other one to. I got soaked going to the post-office, and that’s where I guess God began to play His hand. Jim said the Almighty held a royal flush every blessed time; but that’s card talk, I don’t know what it means, ’cept that Jim said it when the ‘Span of Life’ manager skipped with the boodle—lit out with the cash, I mean, and the company had to walk home from Kalamazoo on the railroad ties.”

“Mercy on us! I never heard a word of it,” cried Miss Bell. “This’ll be a warning! People that have bairns to manage shouldn’t be giving parties; it was the only night since ever you came here that we never put you to your bed. Did Kate not change your clothes when you came in wet?”“She didn’t know I was out, for that would have spoiled everything, ’cause she’d have asked me what I was doing out, and I’d have had to tell her, for I can’t fib that kind of fib. When I came in all soaking, I took a teeny-weeny loan of Uncle’s tartan rug, and played to Kate I was Helen Macgregor, and Kate went into spasms, and didn’t notice anything till my clothes were dry. Was it very very naughty of me?”

“It was indeed! It was worse than naughty, it was silly,” said her Uncle Dan, remembering all the prank had cost them.

“Oh, Lennox! my poor sinful bairn!” said her aunt, most melancholy.

“I didn’t mean the least harm,” protested the child, trembling on the verge of tears. “I did it all to make Kate feel kind of gay, for I hate to see a body mope,—and I wanted a little fun myself,” she added hastily, determined to confess all.

“I’ll Kate her, the wretch!” cried Auntie Bell quite furious, gathering up her knitting.

“Why, Auntie Bell, it wasn’t her fault, it was—”

But before she could say more, Miss Bell was flying to the house for an explanation, Footles barking at her heels astonished, for it was the first time he had seen her trot with a ball of wool trailing behind her. The maid had the kitchen window open to the last inch, and looked out on a street deserted but for a ring of bairns that played before the baker’s door. Their voices, clear and sweet, and laden with no sense of care or apprehension, filled the afternoon with melody—

“Water, water wall-flowers,
Growing up so high,
We are all maidens,
And we must all die.”

To the maid of Colonsay in an autumn mood, the rhyme conveyed some pensive sentiment that was pleasant though it almost made her cry: the air slipped to her heart, the words in some way found the Gaelic chord that shakes in sympathy with minor keys, for beautiful is all the world, our day of it so brief! Even Miss Bell was calmed by the children’s song as it came from the sunny street into the low-ceiled shady kitchen. She had played that game herself, sung these words long ago, never thinking of their meaning: how pitiful it was that words and a tune should so endure, unchanging, and all else alter!

“Kate, Kate, you foolish lass!” she cried, and the maid drew in with the old astonishment and remorse, as if it was her first delinquency.

“I—I was looking for the post,” said she.

“Not for the first time, it seems,” said her mistress. “I’m sorry to hear it was some business of yours that sent Miss Lennox to the post-office on a wet night that was the whole cause of our tribulation. At least you might have seen the wean was dried when she came back.”

“I’m sure and I don’t know what you’re talking about, me’m,” said the maid, astounded.

“You got a letter the day the bairn took ill; what was it about?”

The girl burst into tears and covered her head with her apron. “Oh, Miss Dyce, Miss Dyce!” she cried, “you’re that particular, and I’m ashamed to tell you. It was only just diversion.”

“Indeed, and you must tell me,” said her mistress, now determined. “There’s some mystery here that must be cleared, as I’m a living woman. Show me that letter this instant!”

“I can’t, Miss Dyce, I can’t, I’m quite affronted. You don’t ken who it’s from.”

“I ken better than yourself; it’s from nobody but Lennox,” said Miss Bell.

“My stars!” cried the maid, astonished. “Do you tell me that? Amn’t I the stupid one? I thought it was from Charles. Oh, me’m! what will Charles Maclean of Oronsay think of me? He’ll think I was demented,” and turning to her servant’s chest she threw it open and produced the second sham epistle.

Miss Bell went in with it to Ailie in the parlour, and they read it together. Ailie laughed till the tears came at the story it revealed. “It’s more creditable to her imagination than to my teaching in grammar and spelling,” was her only criticism. “The—the little rogue!”

“And is that the way you look at it?” asked Bell, disgusted. “A pack of lies from end to end. She should be punished for it; at least she should be warned that it was very wicked.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Ailie. “I think she has been punished enough already, if punishment was in it. Just fancy if the Lord could make so much ado about a little thing like that! It’s not a pack of lies at all, Bell; it’s literature, it’s romance.”

“Well, romancing!” said Miss Bell. “What’s romancing, if you leave out Walter Scott? I am glad she has a conviction of the sin of it herself. If she had slipped away from us on Wednesday this letter would have been upon her soul. It’s vexing her now.”

“If that is so, it’s time her mind was relieved,” said Ailie, and rising, sped to the garden with the letter in her hand. Her heart bled to see the apprehension on Bud’s face, and beside her, Dan, stroking her hair and altogether bewildered.

“Bud,” cried Ailie, kissing her, “do you think you could invent a lover for me who would write me letters half so interesting as this? It’s a lover like that I have all the time been waiting for: the ordinary kind, by all my reading, must be very dull in their correspondence, and the lives they lead deplorably humdrum—

“‘Oh, Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling;
Oh, Charlie is my darling, the young marineer.’

After this I’ll encourage only sailors: Bud, dear, get me a nice clean sailor. But I stipulate that he must be more discriminating with his capitals, and know that the verb must agree with its nominative, and not be quite so much confused in his geography.”

“You’re not angry with me, Aunt?” said Bud, in a tone of great relief, with the bloom coming back. “Was it very, very wicked?”

“Pooh!” said Ailie. “If that’s wicked, where’s our Mr Shakespeare? Oh, child! child! you are my own heart’s treasure. I thought a girl called Alison I used to know long ago was long since dead and done with, and here she’s to the fore yet, daft as ever, and her name is Lennox Dyce.”

“No, it wasn’t Lennox wrote that letter,” said Bud; “it was Winifred Wallace, and oh, my! she’s a pretty tough proposition. You’re quite, quite sure it wasn’t fibbing.”

“No more than Cinderella’s fibbing,” said her aunt, and flourished the letter in the face of Dan, who she saw was going to enter some dissent. “Behold, Dan Dyce, the artist b-r-r-rain! Calls sailor sweethearts from the vasty deep, and they come obedient to her bidding. Spise and perils, Dan, and the golden horn a trifle out of its latitude, and the darling boy that’s always being drove from home. One thing you overlooked in the boy, Bud—the hectic flush. I’m sure Kate would have liked a touch of the hectic flush in him.”

But Bud was still contrite, thinking of the servant. “She was so set upon a letter from her Charles,” she explained, “and now she’ll have to know that I was joshing her. Perhaps I shouldn’t say joshing, Auntie Ailie,—I s’pose it’s slang.”

“It is,” said her aunt, “and most unladylike; let us call it pulling her le—let us call it—oh, the English language! I’ll explain it all to Kate, and that will be the end of it.”

“Kate ’d be dre’ffle rattled to talk about love to a grown-up lady,” said Bud, on thinking. “I’d best go in and explain it all myself.”“Very well,” said Auntie Ailie; so Bud went into the house and through the lobby to the kitchen.

“I’ve come to beg your pardon, Kate,” said she hurriedly. “I’m sorry I—I—pulled your leg about that letter you thought was from Charles.”

“Toots! Ye needn’t bother about my leg or the letter either,” said Kate, most cheerfully, with another letter open in her hand, and Mr Dyce’s evening mail piled on the table before her; “letters are like herring now, they’re comin’ in in shoals. I might have kent yon one never came from Oronsay, for it hadn’t the smell of peats. I have a real one now that’s new come in from Charles, and it’s just a beauty! He got his leg broken on the boats a month ago, and Dr Macphee’s attending him. Oh, I’m that glad to think that Charles’s leg is in the hands of a kent face!”

“Why! that’s funny,” said Bud. “And we were just going to write—oh, you mean the other Charles?”

“I mean Charles Maclean,” said Kate, with some confusion. “I—I—was only lettin’-on about the other Charles; he was only a diversion.”

“But you sent him a letter?” cried Bud.

“Not me!” said Kate composedly. “I kept it, and I sent it on to Charles out in Oronsay when you were poorly; it did fine! He says he’s glad to hear about my education, and doesn’t think much of gentlemen that dances, but that he’s always glad to get the scrape of a pen from me, because—because—well, just because he loves me still the same, yours respectfully, Charles Maclean. And oh, my stars, look at what a lot of crosses!”

Bud scrutinised them with amazement. “Well, he’s a pansy!” said she.