Just opposite rose the imposing structure of three storeys in red stone which sheltered Thomas and Billy Kirke. Mr. Kirke was in business. Elizabeth suspected him—though with no grounds to speak of—of "soft goods." Anyway, from some mysterious haunt in the city "Papa" managed to get enough money to keep "Mamma" and the children in the greatest comfort, to help the widows and fatherless, and to entertain a large circle of acquaintances in most hospitable fashion. He was a cheery little man with a beard, absolutely satisfied with his lot in life.
Elizabeth looked out at the prospect somewhat drearily. It was a dull November day. Rain was beginning to fall heavily; the grass looked sodden and dark. A message-boy went past, with his empty basket over his head, whistling a doleful tune. A cart of coal stopped at the Kirkes', and she watched the men carry it round to the kitchen premises. They had sacks over their shoulders to protect them from the rain, and they lifted the wet, shining lumps of coal into hamper-like baskets and staggered with them over the well-gravelled path. What a grimy job for them, Elizabeth thought, but everything seemed rather grimy this morning. Try as she would, she couldn't remember any really pleasant thing that was going to happen; day after day of dreary doings loomed before her. She sighed, and then, so to speak, shook herself mentally.
Elizabeth had a notion that when one felt depressed the remedy was not to give oneself a pleasure, but to do some hated duty, so she now thought rapidly over distasteful tasks awaiting her. Buff's suit to be sponged with ammonia and mended, old clothes to be looked out for a jumble sale, a pile of letters to reply to. "Oh dear!" said Elizabeth; but she went resolutely upstairs, and by the time she had tidied out various drawers and laid out unneeded garments, and had brought brown paper and string and tied them into neat bundles, she felt distinctly more cheerful.
The mending of Buff's suit completed the cheering process; for, in one of his trouser pockets, she found a picture drawn and coloured by that artist. It was a picture of Noah and the Ark, bold in conception if not very masterly in workmanship. Noah was represented with his head poked out of a skylight, his patriarchal beard waving in the wind, watching for the return of the dove; but the artist must have got confused in his ornithology, for the fowl coming towards Noah was a fearsome creature with a beak like an eagle. Aloft, astride on a somewhat solid cloud, clad in a crown and a sort of pyjama-suit, sat what was evidently intended to be an angel of sorts—watching with interest the manoeuvres of Noah and the eagle-like dove. And as Elizabeth smoothed out the crumpled masterpiece she wondered how she could have imagined herself dull when the house contained the Buffy-boy.
The writing-table in the drawing-room showed a pile of letters waiting to be answered. Elizabeth stirred the fire into a blaze, sniffed at a bowl of violets, and sat down to answer them. "Two bazaar circulars! and both from people who have helped me. … Well, I must just buy things to send." She turned to the next. "How bills do come home to roost! I wish I had paid this at the time. Now I must write a cheque—and my account so lean and shrunken. What an offence bills are!"
Very reluctantly she wrote a cheque and looked at it wistfully before she put it into the envelope, and took up a letter from a person unknown, resident in Rothesay, asking her to sing in that town at a charity concert. "I heard you sing while staying with my sister, Mrs. M'Cubbins, whom you know, and I will be pleased if you can stay the night——" so ran the letter. "Pleased if I stay the night!" thought Elizabeth wrathfully. "I should just think I would if I went—which I won't, of course. Mrs. M'Cubbins' sister! That explains the impertinence." And she wrote a chill note regretting that she could not give herself the pleasure. An invitation to dinner was declined because it was for "Prayer-meeting night." Then she took up a long letter, much underlined, which she read through carefully before she began to write.
"Most kind of Aunts.—How can I possibly go to Switzerland with you this Christmas? Have I not a father? also a younger brother? It's not because I don't want to go—you know how I would love it; but picture to yourself Father and Buff spending their Christmas alone! Would you not come to us? I propose it with diffidence, for I know you think in Glasgow dwelleth no good thing; but won't you try it? You know you have never given it a chance. A few hours on your way to the North is all you ever give us, and Glasgow can't be judged in an hour or two—nor its people either. I don't say that it would be in the least amusing for you, but it would be great fun for us, and you ought to try to be altruistic, dearest of aunts. You know quite well that Mr. Arthur Townshend will be quite all right without you for a little. He has probably lots of invitations for Christmas, being such a popular young man and——"
The opening of the gate and the sound of footsteps on the gravel made Elizabeth run to the window.
"Buff—carrying his coat and the rain pouring! Of all the abandoned youths!"
Buff dashed into the house, threw his overcoat into one corner, his cap into another, and violently assaulted the study door, kicking it when it failed to open at the first attempt.
"Boy, what are you about?" asked his father, as Buff fell on his knees before the chair on which lay, comfortably asleep, the little rescued kitten.
CHAPTER IV
"Sir Toby Belch. Does not our life consist of four elements?
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking."
Twelfth Night.
"Poo-or pussy!" murmured Buff, laying his head beside his treasure on the cushion.
"Get up, boy," said Mr. Seton. "You carry kindness to animals too far."
"And he doesn't carry tidiness any way at all," said Elizabeth, who had followed Buff into the study. "He has strewed his garments all over the place in the most shocking way. Come along, Buff, and pick them up. … Father, tell him to come."
"Do as your sister says, Buff."
But Buff clung limpet-like to the chair and expostulated. "What's the good of putting things tidy when I'm putting them on again in a minute?"
"There's something in that," Mr. Seton said, as he put back in the shelves the books he had been using.
"All I have to say," said Elizabeth, "is that if I had been brought up in this lax way I wouldn't be the example of sweetness and light I am now. Do as you are told, Buff. I hear Ellen bringing up luncheon."
Buff stowed the kitten under his arm and stood up. "I'll pick them up," he said in a dignified way, "if Launcelot can have his dinner with me."
"Who?" asked Elizabeth.
"This is him," Buff explained, looking down at the distraught face of the kitten peeping from under his arm.
"What made you call it Launcelot?" asked Elizabeth, as her father went out of the room laughing.
"Thomas said to call him Topsy, and Billy said Bull's Eye was a nice name, but I thought he looked more like a Launcelot."
"Well—I'll take it while you pick up your coat and run and wash your hands. You'll be late if you don't hurry."
"Aw! no sausages!" said Buff, five minutes later, as he wriggled into his place at the luncheon-table.
"Can't have sausages every day, sonny," said his sister; "the butcher man would get tired making them for us."
"Aren't there any sausage-mines?" asked Buff; but his father and sister had begun to talk to each other, so his question remained unanswered.
Unless spoken to, Buff seldom offered a remark, but talked rapidly to himself in muffled tones, to the great bewilderment of strangers, who were apt to think him slightly deranged.
Ellen had brought in the pudding when Elizabeth noticed that her young brother