One evening Mr Dyce came in from his office and quizzed her in the lobby. “Kate,” said he, “I’m not complaining, but I wish you would have mercy on my back-door. There’s not a night I have come home of late but if I look up the close I find a lad or two trying to bite his way into you through the door. Can you no’ go out, like a good lass, and talk at them in the Gaelic—it would serve them right! If you don’t, steps will have to be taken with a strong hand, as you say yourself. What are they wanting? Bless my soul! can this—can this be love?”
She ran to the sanctuary of the kitchen, plumped in a chair, and was swept away in a storm of laughter and tears that frightened Bud, who waited there a return of her aunts from the Women’s Guild. “Why, Kate, what’s the matter?” she asked.
“Your un—your un—un—uncle’s blaming me for harbouring all them chaps about the door, and says it’s l-l—love: oh dear! I’m black affronted.”
“You needn’t go into hysterics about a little thing like that,” said Bud; “Uncle Dan’s tickled to death to see so many beaux you have, wanting you to that ball; he said last night he had to walk between so many of them waiting for you there in front, it was like shassaying up the middle in the Haymakers.”
“It’s not hysterics, nor hersterics either,” said the maid; “and oh, I wish I was out of here and back in the isle of Colonsay!”
Yes, Colonsay became a great place then. America, where the prospects for domestics used to be so fascinating, had lost its glamour since Bud had told her the servants there were as discontented as in Scotland, and now her native isle beat Paradise. She would talk by the hour, at a washing, of its charms, of which the greatest seemed to be the absence of public lamps and the way you heard the wind! Colonsay seemed to be a place where folk were always happy, meeting in each other’s houses, dancing, singing, courting, marrying, getting money every now and then from sons or wealthy cousins in Australia. Bud wondered if they never did any work in Colonsay. Yes, yes, indeed! Kate could assure her, they worked quite often out in Colonsay—in the winter time.
But one thing greatly troubled her—she must write back at once to the only Charles, who so marvellously had come to her through Bud’s unconscious offices, and she knew she could never sustain the standard of hand-write, spelling, and information Bud had established in her first epistle. Her position was lamentable. It was all very well to be the haughty madam on the street, and show herself a wise-like modest gyurl, but what was that without the education? C. Maclean was a man of education—he got it on the yats among the gentry, he had travelled all the world!