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, – “excepting Ailie. Get her to put the little creature through her tests. If she’s not able to spell cat at ten she’ll be an astounding woman by the time she’s twenty.”
The end of it was that Aunt Ailie, whenever she came in, upon Bell’s report, went over the street to Rodger’s shop and made a purchase. As she hurried back with it, bare-headed, in a cool drizzle of rain that jewelled her wonderful hair, she felt like a child herself again. The banker-man saw her from his lodging as she flew across the street with sparkling eyes and eager lips, the roses on her cheeks, and was sure, foolish man! that she had been for a new novel or maybe a cosmetique, since in Rodger’s shop they sell books and balms and ointments. She made the quiet street magnificent for a second – a poor wee second, and then, for him, the sun went down. The tap of the knocker on the door she closed behind her struck him on the heart. You may guess, good women, if you like, that at the end of the book the banker-man is to marry Ailie, but you’ll be wrong; she was not thinking of the man at all at all – she had more to do; she was hurrying to open the gate of gold to her little niece.
“I’ve brought you something wonderful,” said she to the child – “better than dolls, better than my cloak, better than everything; guess what it is.”
Bud wrinkled her brows. “Ah, dear!” she sighed, “we may be too joco! And I’m to sing, sing, sing even if I’m as – timmer as a cask, and Robert Bruce is the saviour of his country.” She marched across the room, trailing Ailie’s cloak with her, in an absurd caricature of Bell’s brisk manner. Yet not so much the actress engrossed in her performance, but what she tried to get a glimpse of what her aunt concealed.
“You need not try to see it,” said Ailie, smiling, with the secret in her breast. “You must honestly guess.”
“Better’n dolls and candies, oh, my!” said Bud; “I hope it’s not the Shorter Catechism,” she concluded, looking so grave that her aunt laughed.
“It’s not the Catechism,” said Ailie; “try again. Oh, but you’ll never guess! It’s a key.”
“A key?” repeated Bud, plainly cast down.
“A gold key,” said her aunt.
“What for?” asked Bud.
Ailie sat herself down on the floor and drew the child upon her knees. She had a way of doing that which made her look like a lass in her teens; indeed, it was most pleasing if the banker-man could just have seen it! “A gold key,” she repeated, lovingly, in Bud’s ear. “A key to a garden – the loveliest garden, with flowers that last the whole year round. You can pluck and pluck at them and they’re never a single one the less. Better than sweet peas! But that’s not all, there’s a big garden-party to be at it – ”
“My! I guess I’ll put on my best glad rags,” said Bud. “And the hat with pink.” Then a fear came to her face. “Why, Aunt Ailie, you can’t have a garden-party this time of the year,” and she looked at the window down whose panes the rain was now streaming.
“This garden-party goes on all the time,” said Ailie. “Who cares about the weather? Only very old people; not you and I. I’ll introduce you to a lot of nice people – Di Vernon, and – you don’t happen to know a lady called Di Vernon, do you, Bud?”
“I wouldn’t know her if she was handed to me on a plate with parsley trimmings,” said Bud promptly.
“ – Di Vernon, then, and Effie Deans, and Little Nell, and the Marchioness; and Richard Swiveller, and Tom Pinch, and the Cranford folks, and Juliet Capulet – ”
“She must belong to one of the first families,” said Bud. “I have a kind of idea that I have heard of her.”
“And Mr Falstaff – such a naughty man, but nice too! And Rosalind.”
“Rosalind!” cried Bud. “You mean Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’?”
Ailie stared at her with astonishment. “You amazing child!” said she, “who told you about ‘As You Like It’?”
“Nobody told me; I just read about her when Jim was learning the part of Charles the Wrestler he played on six ’secutive nights in the Waldorf.”
“Read it!” exclaimed her aunt. “You mean he or Mrs Molyneux read it to you.”
“No, I read it myself,” said Bud.
“‘Now my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious Court?’”
She threw Aunt Ailie’s cloak over one shoulder, put forth a ridiculously little leg with an air of the playhouse, and made the gestures of Jim Molyneux.
“I thought you couldn’t read,” said Ailie. “You little fraud! You made Aunt Bell think you couldn’t spell cat.”
“Oh, Queen of Sheba! did she think I was in earnest?” cried Bud. “I was just pretending. I’m apt to be pretending pretty often; why, Kate thinks I make Works. I can read anything; I’ve read books that big it gave you cramp. I s’pose you were only making-believe about that garden, and you haven’t any key at all, but I don’t mind; I’m not kicking.”
Ailie put her hand to her bosom and revealed the Twopenny she had bought to be the key to the wonderful garden of letters – the slim little grey-paper-covered primer in which she had learned her own first lessons. She held it up between her finger and thumb that Bud might read its title on the cover. Bud understood immediately and laughed, but not quite at her ease for once.
“I’m dre’ffle sorry, Aunt Ailie,” she said. “It was wicked to pretend just like that, and put you to a lot of trouble. Father wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Oh, I’m not kicking,” said Ailie, borrowing her phrase to put her at her ease again. “I’m too glad you’re not so far behind as Aunt Bell imagined. So you like books? Capital! And Shakespeare no less! What do you like best, now?”
“Poetry,” said Bud. “Particularly the bits I don’t understand, but just about almost. I can’t bear to stop and dally with too easy poetry; once I know it all plain and there’s no more to it, I – I – I love to amble on. I – why! I make poetry myself.”
“Really?” said Ailie with twinkling eyes.
“Sort of poetry,” said Bud. “Not so good as ‘As You Like It’ – not nearly so good, of course! I have loads of truly truly poetry inside me, but it sticks at the bends, and then I get bits that fit, made by somebody else, and wish I had been spry and said them first. Other times I’m the real Winifred Wallace.”
“Winifred Wallace?” said Aunt Ailie inquiringly.
“Winifred Wallace,” repeated Bud composedly. “I’m her. It’s my – it’s my poetry name. ‘Bud Dyce’ wouldn’t be any use for the magazines; it’s not dinky enough.”
“Bless me, child, you don’t tell me you write poetry for the magazines?” said her astonished aunt.
“No,” said Bud,