auntie, I thought it was George Washington,” said Bud, surprised. “I guess if you’re looking for a little wee stupid, it’s me.”
“We’re talking about Scotland,” said Miss Bell, severely. “He saved Scotland. It was well worth while! Can you do your sums?”
“I can not,” said Bud, emphatically. “I hate them.” Miss Bell said not a word more; she was too distressed at such confessed benightedness; but she went out of the parlor to search for Ailie. Bud forgot she was beautiful and tall and old in Ailie’s cloak; she was repeating to herself “Man’s chief end” with rolling r’s, and firmly fixing in her memory the fact that Robert Bruce, not George Washington, was the savior of his country and watched spiders.
Ailie was out, and so her sister found no ear for her bewailings over the child’s neglected education till Mr. Dyce came in humming the tune of the day – “Sweet Afton” – to change his hat for one more becoming to a sitting of the sheriff’s court. He was searching for his good one in what he was used to call “the piety press,” for there was hung his Sunday clothes, when Bell distressfully informed him that the child could not so much as spell cat.
“Nonsense! I don’t believe it,” said he. “That would be very unlike our William.”
“It’s true – I tried her myself!” said Bell. “She was never at a school; isn’t it just deplorable?”
“H’m!” said Mr. Dyce, “it depends on the way you look at it, Bell.”
“She does not know a word of her catechism, nor the name of Robert Bruce, and says she hates counting.”
“Hates counting!” repeated Mr. Dyce, wonderfully cheering up; “that’s hopeful; it reminds me of myself. Forbye its gey like Brother William. His way of counting was ‘one pound, ten shillings in my pocket, two pounds that I’m owing some one, and ten shillings I get to-morrow – that’s five pounds I have; what will I buy you now?’ The worst of arithmetic is that it leaves nothing to the imagination. Two and two’s four and you’re done with it; there’s no scope for either fun or fancy as there might be if the two and two went courting in the dark and swapped their partners by an accident.”
“I wish you would go in and speak to her,” said Bell, distressed still, “and tell her what a lot she has to learn.”
“What, me!” cried Uncle Dan; “excuse my grammar,” and he laughed. “It’s an imprudent kind of mission for a man with all his knowledge in little patches. I have a lot to learn, myself, Bell; it takes me all my time to keep the folk I meet from finding out the fact.”
But he went in humming, Bell behind him, and found the child still practising “Man’s chief end,” so engrossed in the exercise she never heard him enter. He crept behind her, and put his hands over her eyes.
“Guess who,” said he, in a shrill falsetto.
“It’s Robert Bruce,” said Bud, without moving.
“No – cold – cold! – guess again,” said her uncle, growling like Giant Blunderbore.
“I’ll mention no names,” said she, “but it’s mighty like Uncle Dan.”
He stood in front of her and put on a serious face. “What’s this I am hearing, Miss Lennox,” said he, “about a little girl who doesn’t know a lot of things nice little girls ought to know?”
“‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,’” repeated Bud, reflectively. “I’ve got that all right, but what does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” said Mr. Dyce, a bit taken aback. “You tell her, Bell; what does it mean? I must not be late for the court.”
“You’re far cleverer than I am,” said Bell. “Tell her yourself.”
“It means,” said Daniel Dyce, the lawyer, seating himself on the sofa beside his niece, “that man in himself is a gey poor soul, no’ worth a pin, though he’s apt to think the world was made for his personal satisfaction. At the best he’s but an instrument – a harp of a thousand strings God bends to hear in His leisure. He made that harp – the heart and mind of man – when He was in a happy hour. Strings hale and strings broken, strings slack or tight, there are all kinds of them; the best we can do’s to be taut and trembling for the gladness of God who loves fine music, and set the stars themselves to singing from the very day He put them birling in the void. To glorify’s to wonder and adore, and who keeps the wondering, humble heart, the adoring eye, is to God pleasing exceedingly. Sing, lassie, sing, sing, sing, inside ye, even if ye are as timmer as a cask. God knows I have not much of a voice myself, but I’m full of nobler airs than ever crossed my rusty thrapple. To be grateful always, and glad things are no worse, is a good song to start the morning.”
“Ah, but sin, Dan, sin!” said Bell, sighing, for she always feared her own light-heartedness. “We may be too joco.”
“Say ye so?” he cried, turning to his sister with a flame upon his visage. “By the heavens above us, no! Sin might have been eternal; each abominable thought might have kept in our minds, constant day and night from the moment that it bred there; the theft we did might keep everlastingly our hand in our neighbor’s kist as in a trap; the knife we thrust with might have kept us thrusting forever and forever. But no – God’s good! sleep comes, and the clean morning, and the morning is Christ, and every moment of time is a new opportunity to amend. It is not sin that is eternal, it is righteousness and peace. Joco! We cannot be too joco, having our inheritance.”
He stopped suddenly, warned by a glance of his sister’s, and turned to look in his niece’s face to find bewilderment there. The mood that was not often published by Dan Dyce left him in a flash, and he laughed and put his arms round her.
“I hope you’re a lot wiser for my sermon, Bud,” said he. “I can see you have pins and needles worse than under the Reverend Mr. Frazer on the Front. What’s the American for haivers – for foolish speeches?”
“Hot air,” said Bud, promptly.
“Good!” said Dan Dyce, rubbing his hands together. “What I’m saying may seem just hot air to you, but it’s meant. You do not know the Shorter Catechism; never mind; there’s a lot of it I’m afraid I do not know myself; but the whole of it is in that first answer to ‘Man’s chief end.’ Reading and writing, and all the rest of it, are of less importance, but I’ll not deny they’re gey and handy. You’re no Dyce if you don’t master them easily enough.”
He kissed her and got gayly up and turned to go. “Now,” said he, “for the law, seeing we’re done with the gospels. I’m a conveyancing lawyer – though you’ll not know what that means – so mind me in your prayers.”
Bell went out into the lobby after him, leaving Bud in a curious frame of mind, for “Man’s chief end,” and Bruce’s spider, and the word “joco,” all tumbled about in her, demanding mastery.
“Little help I got from you, Dan!” said Bell to her brother. “You never even tried her with a multiplication table.”
“What’s seven times nine?” he asked her, with his fingers on the handle of the outer door, his eyes mockingly mischievous.
She flushed and laughed, and pushed him on the shoulder. “Go away with you!” said she. “Fine you ken I could never mind seven times!”
“No Dyce ever could,” said he –
