And there she would be—the foolish woman! keeping him at the crack, the very thing he wanted, till Mr Dyce himself, maybe, seeing his silver hours mishandled, would come to send his sister in, and see that his gardener earned at least a little of his wages.
“A terrible man for the ladies, William! You must have had a taking way with you when you were in the Army,” was all that the lawyer had to say. “There was some talk about doing a little to the garden, but, hoots man! don’t let it spoil your smoke!”
It was then you would see Wanton Wully busy.
Where would Bud be then? At her lessons? no, no, you may be sure of it, but in with Kate of Colonsay giving the maid the bloody tale of Inkermann. It was a far finer and more moving story as it came from Bud than ever it was on the lips of Wanton Wully. From him she only got the fling of the arms that drove the bayonet home, the lips pursed up, as if they were gathered by a string, the fire of the moment, and the broad Scots tongue he spoke in. To what he gave she added fancy and the drama.
“—as black as a ton o’ coal wi’ the creesh o’ the cartridges . . . either him or me . . . I gie’d him . . . I gie’d him . . . I shut my eyes, and said, ‘O God, Thy pardon!’ and gie’d him the BAGGONET!”
Kate’s apron at that would fly up to cover her eyes, for she saw before her all the bloody spectacle. “I’m that glad,” she would say, “that my lad’s a sailor. I couldna sleep one iota at night thinkin’ of their baggonets if he was a man-o’-war. And that puts me in mind, my dear, it’s more than a week since we sent the chap a letter. Have you time the now to sit and write a scrape to Hamburg on the Elbow—imports iron ore?”
And Bud had time, and sit she would and write a lovely letter to Charles Maclean of Oronsay. She told him that her heart was sore, but she must confess that she had one time plighted her troth to a Russian army officer, who died, alas! on the bloody field. His last words, as his life-blood slowly ebbed away, were—
“What _would_ be the last words of a Russian officer who loved you?” asked Bud, biting her pen in her perplexity.
“Toots! anything—‘my best respects to Kate,’” said the maid, who had learned by this time that the letters Charles liked the most were the ones where Bud most freely used imagination.