Bud: A Novel

THE town's bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with queer little jolts and pauses as if Wanton Wully Oliver the ringer had been jovial the night before. A blithe New-Year's-time bell; a droll daft scatter-brained bell; it gave no horrid alarms no solemn reminders that commonly toll from steeples and make good-fellows melancholy to think upon things undone the brevity of days and years the parting of good company but a cheery ditty—boom boom ding-a-dong boom boom ding hie ding-dong infecting whoever heard it with a kind of foolish gayety. The burgh town turned on its pillows drew up its feet from the bed-bottles last night hot now turned to chilly stone rubbed its eyes and knew by that bell it was the daftest of the daft days come. It cast a merry spell on the community; it tickled them even in their cosey beds. Wanton Wully's on the randan! said the folk and rose quickly and ran to pull aside screens and blinds to look out in the dark on window-ledges cushioned deep in snow. The children hugged themselves under the blankets and told one another in whispers it was not a porridge morning no nor Sunday but a breakfast of shortbread ham and eggs; and behold! a beautiful loud drum careless as 'twere a reveille of hot wild youths began to beat in a distant lane. Behind the house of Dyce the lawyer a cock that must have been young and hearty crew like to burst; and at the stables of the post-office the man who housed his horses after bringing the morning mail through night and storm from a distant railway station sang a song:CONTENTSTHE town's bell rang through the dark of the winter morning with ...ALISON DYCE came lightly up the rest of the stair whistling blithely ...I MISDOUBTED Mr. Molyneux from the very first said Ailie ...THE orphan child of William and Mary Dyce dead the pair of them ...SHE was a lucky lassie this of ours to have come home to her father's ...I HEARD all about you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan from pop ...IF Molyneux the actor was to blame for sending this child of ten on ...DANIEL DYCE had an office up the street at the windy corner facing ...THAT the child should have gone to the dame school at all was due to ...IT was a saying of Daniel Dyce's that all the world is under one's own ...BUT the Dyces never really knew how great and serious was the charge ...SHE was wayward she was passionate she was sometimes wild. ...ANTON WULLY only briefly rang the morning bell and gingerly with ...FOLLOWING on stormy weeks had come an Indian summer when ...SUDDENLY all the town began to talk of the pride of Kate MacNeill. ...I CANNA be bothered with that Shakespeare Kate cried hopelessly ...THERE was joy a few days later in the Dyces' kitchen when Peter the ...YES that was one bright day in the dismal season the day she tutored ...SPRING came and its quickening; forest and shrub and flower felt the ...KATERIN! she said coming into the kitchen with a handful of paper ...TOO slow far too slow passed the lengthening days. Kate was bedded ...WHEN Kate that afternoon was told her hour was come and that ...TA-RAN-TA-RA! Ta-ran-ta-ra!FOR only a day or two the world (in a fur-lined collar) dwelt among us ...BELL liked the creature as I say not a little because she saw in him ...WORKING thus furiously at the task of love which in all it does for ...WHEN Miss Bell rose as she did in a day or two bantered into ...FOR all the regrets of increasing age there is one alleviation among many ...IT is another mercy too that in our age we learn to make the best of what ...YOU surely did not come in these daftlike garments all the way from Edinburgh?FORTUNATELY Kate's marriage came to distract them for a while from ...IT took two maids to fill Kate's place in the Dyces' household—one for ...IT was a wet night in November. With a chuckle of horse's hoofs on shining ...THE talk of the whole of London! The beaute