“Where in the world's Chickagoo?” bellowed the postman.
“In America, of course—where else would it be but in America?” said Kate, contemptuously. “Where is your education not to know that Chickagoo is in America, where the servant-maids have a pound a week of wages, and learn the piano, and can get married when they like quite easy?”
“Bless me! do you say so?” cried the postman, in amazement, and not without a pang of jealousy.
“Yes, I say so!” said Kate, in the snappish style she often showed to the letter-carrier. “And the child is coming this very day with the coach-and-twice from Maryfield railway station—oh, them trains! them trains! with their accidents; my heart is in my mouth to think of a child in them. Will you not come round to the back and get the mistress's New Year dram? She is going to give a New Year dram to every man that calls on business this day. But I will not let you in, for it is in my mind that you would not be a lucky first-foot.”
“Much obleeged,” said the postman, “but ye needna be feared. I'm not allowed to go dramming at my duty. It's offeecial, and I canna help it. If it was not offeecial, there's few letter-carriers that wouldna need to hae iron hoops on their heids to keep their brains from burstin' on the day efter New Year.”
Kate heard a voice behind her, and pulled her head in hurriedly with a gasp, and a cry of “Mercy, the start I got!” while the postman fled on his rounds. Miss Dyce stood behind, in the kitchen, indignant.
“You are a perfect heartbreak, Kate,” said the mistress. “I have rung for breakfast twice and you never heard me, with your clattering out there to the letter-carrier. It's a pity you cannot marry the glee party, as Mr. Dyce calls him, and be done with it.”
“Me marry him!” cried the maid, indignantly. “I think I see myself marryin' a man like yon, and his eyes not neighbors.”
“That's a trifle in a husband if his heart is good; the letter-carrier's eyes may—may skew a little, but it's not to be wondered at, considering the lookout he has to keep on all sides of him to keep out of reach of every trollop in the town who wants to marry him.”
And leaving Kate speechless at this accusation, the mistress of the house took the letters from her hands and went to the breakfast-table with them.
She had read the contents of the post-card before she reached the parlor; its news dismayed her.
“Just imagine!” she cried. “Here's that bairn on his way from Liverpool his lee-lone, and not a body with him!''
“What! what!” cried Mr. Dyce, whose eyes had been shut to say the grace. “Isn't that actor-fellow, Molyneux, coming with him, as he promised?”
Miss Dyce sunk in a chair and burst into tears, crushing the post-card in her hand.
“What does he say?” demanded her brother.
“He says—he says—oh, dear me!—he says, 'Pip, pip!'” quoth the weeping sister.
CHAPTER III
I MISDOUBTED Mr. Molyneux from the very first,” said Ailie, turning as white as a clout. “From all his post-cards he was plainly too casual. Stop it, Bell, my dear—have sense; the child's in a Christian land, and in the care of somebody who is probably more dependable than this delightful Molyneux.”
Mr. Dyce took out an old, thick, silver verge. “Nine o'clock,” he said, with a glance at its creamy countenance. “Molyneux's consignment is making his first acquaintance with Scottish scenery and finding himself, I hope, amused at the Edinburgh accent. He'll arrive at Maryfield—poor, wee smout!—at three; if I drive over at twelve, I'll be in time to meet him. Tuts, Bell, give over; he's a ten-year-old and a Dyce at that—there's not the slightest fear of him.”
“Ten years old, and in a foreign country—if you can call Scotland a foreign country,” cried Miss Dyce, still sobbing with anger and grief. “Oh, the cat-witted scamp, that Molyneux—if I had him here!”
The dining-room door opened and let in a yawning dog of most plebeian aspect, longest lie-abed of the household, the clamor of the street, and the sound of sizzling bacon, followed by Kate's majestic form at a stately glide, because she had on her new stiff lilac print that was worn for breakfast only on Sundays and holidays. “You would think I was never coming,” she said, genially, and smiled widely as she put the tray on the sideboard. This that I show you, I fear, is a beggarly household, absurdly free from ceremony. Mr. Dyce looked at his sister Ailie and smiled; Ailie looked at her sister Bell and smiled. Bell took a hair-pin or two out of their places and seemed to stab herself with them viciously in the nape of the neck, and smiled not at all nor said anything, for she was furious with Molyneux, whom she could see in her mind's eye—an ugly, tippling, frowzy-looking person with badly polished boots, an impression that would have greatly amused Mrs. Molyneux, who, not without reason, counted her Jim the handsomest man and the best dressed in the profession in all Chicago.
“I'm long of coming, like Royal Charlie,” Kate proceeded, as she passed the ashets on to Miss Dyce; “but, oh me! New Year's Day here is no' like New Year's Day in the bonny isle of Colonsay.”
Mr. Dyce said grace and abstractedly helped himself alternately from both ends of a new roll of powdered butter. “Dan, dear, don't take the butter from both ends—it spoils the look,” said Bell. “Tuts!” said he. “What's the odds? There'll be no ends at all when we're done with it. I'm utterly regardless of the symmetrical and the beautiful this morning. I'm savage to think of that man Molyneux. If I was not a man of peace I would be wanting to wring Mr. Moly-neux's neck,” and he twisted his morning roll in halves with ferocious hands.
“Dan!” said Ailie, shocked. “I never heard you say anything so blood-thirsty in all my life before. I would never have thought it of you.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “There's many things about me you never suspected. You women are always under delusions about the men—about the men—well, dash it! about the men you like. I know myself so well that there is no sin, short of one or two not so accounted, that I cannot think myself capable of. I believe I might be forced into robbing a kirk if I had no money and was as hungry as I was this morning before that post-card came to ruin a remarkably fine New-Year's-Day appetite, or even into murdering a man like Molyneux who failed in the simplest duties no man should neglect.”
“I hope and trust,” said Bell, still nervous, “that he is a wiselike boy with a proper upbringing, who will not be frightened at travelling and make no mistakes about the train. If he was a Scotch laddie, with the fear of God in him, I would not be a bit put about for him, for he would be sure to be asking, asking, and if he felt frightened he would just start and eat something, like a Christian. But this poor child has no advantages—just American!”
Ailie sat back in her chair, with her teacup in her hand, and laughed, and Kate laughed quietly—though it beat her to see where the fun was; and the dog laughed likewise—at least it wagged its tail and twisted its body and made such extraordinary sounds in its throat that you could say it was laughing.
“Tuts! you are the droll woman, Bell,” said Mr. Dyce, blinking at her. “You have the daftest ideas of Some things. For a woman
