"Hurray!" said Billy.
"And when we've finished 'Yellow Dog Dingo,'" said Buff, "will you play at 'Giantess'?"
"Well—for half an hour, perhaps," said Elizabeth. "Now run off, or I'll be Giantess this minute and eat you all up."
They moved towards the door; then Thomas stopped and observed dreamily:
"I dreamt last night that Satan and his wife and baby were chasing me."
"Oh, Thomas!" said Elizabeth. She watched the three little figures in their bunchy little overcoats, with their arms round each other's necks, stumble out of the gate, then she shut the front-door and went into her father's study.
Mr. Seton was standing in what, to him, was a very characteristic attitude. One foot was on a chair, his left hand was in his pocket, while in his right he held a smallish green volume. A delighted smile was on his face as Elizabeth entered.
"Aha, Father! Caught you that time."
Mr. Seton put the book back on the shelf.
"My dear girl, I was only glancing at something that——"
"Only a refreshing glance at Scott before you begin your sermon, Father dear, and 'what for no'? Oh! while I remember—the Sabbath-school social comes off on the ninth: you are to take the chair, and I'm to sing. I shall print it in big letters on this card and stick it on the mantelpiece, then we're bound to remember it."
Mr. Seton was already at his writing-table.
"Yes, yes," he said in an absent-minded way. "Run away now, like a good girl. I'm busy."
"Yes, I'm going. Just look at the snug way Buff has arranged the kitten. Father, Thomas has been having nightmares about Satan in his domestic relations. Did you know Satan had a wife and baby——?"
"Elizabeth!"
"I didn't say it; it was Thomas. That boy has an original mind."
"Well, well, girl; but you are keeping me back."
"Yes, I'm going. There's just one thing—about the chapter at prayers. I was wondering—only wondering, you know—if Baruch the son of Neriah had any real bearing on our everyday life?"
Mr. Seton looked at his daughter, then remarked as he turned back to his work: "I sometimes think you are a very ignorant creature, Elizabeth."
But Elizabeth only laughed as she shut the door and made her way kitchenwards.
On the kitchen stairs she met Ellen the housemaid, who stopped her with a "Please, Miss Elizabeth," while she fumbled in the pocket of her print and produced a post card with a photograph on it.
"It's ma brither," she explained. "I got it this mornin'."
Elizabeth carried the card to the window at the top of the staircase and studied it carefully.
"I think he's like you, Ellen," she said. "How beautifully his hair is brushed."
Ellen beamed. "He's got awful pretty prominent eyes," she said.
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "I expect you're very proud of him, Ellen. Is he your eldest brother?"
"Yes, mum. He's a butcher in the Co-operative and awful steady."
Elizabeth handed back the card.
"Thank you very much for letting me see it. How is your little sister's foot?"
"It's keepin' a lot better, and ma mother said I was to thank you for the toys and books you sent her."
"Oh, that's all right. I'm so glad she's better. When you're doing my room to-day remember the mirrors, will you? This weather makes them so dim."
"Yes, mum," said Ellen cheerfully, as she went to her day's work.
Elizabeth found Marget waiting for her. She had laid out on the kitchen-table all the broken meats from the pantry and was regarding the display gloomily. Marget had been twenty-five years with the Setons and was not so much a servant as a sort of Grand Vizier. She expected to be consulted on every point, and had the gravest fears about Buff's future because Elizabeth refused to punish him.
"It's no' kindness," she would say; "it's juist saftness. He should be wheepit."
She adored the memory of Elizabeth's mother, who had died five years before, when Buff was a little tiny boy. She adored too "the Maister," as she called Mr. Seton, though deprecating his other-worldly, absent-minded ways. "It wadna dae if we were a' like the Maister," she often reminded Elizabeth. "Somebody maun think aboot washin's and things."
As to the Seton family—Elizabeth she thought well-meaning but "gey impident whiles"; the boys in India, Alan the soldier and Walter the promising young civilian, she still described as "notorious ill laddies"; while Buff (David Stuart was his christened name) she regarded as a little soul who, owing to an over-indulgent father and sister, was in danger of straying on the Broad Road were she not there to herd him by threats and admonitions into the Narrow Way.
Truth to say, she admired them enormously, they were her "bairns," but often her eyes would fill with tears as she said, "They're a' fine, but the best o' them's awa'."
Sandy, the eldest, had died at Oxford in his last summer-term, to the endless sorrow of all who loved him. His mother—that gentle lady—a few months later followed him, crushed out of life by the load of her grief, and Elizabeth had to take her place and mother the boys, be a companion to her father, shepherd the congregation, and bring up the delicate little Buff, who was so much younger than the others as to seem like an only child.
Elizabeth had stood up bravely to her burden, and laughed her way through the many difficulties that beset her—laughed more than was quite becoming, some people said; but Elizabeth always preferred disapproval to pity.
This morning she noted down all that Marget said was needed, and arranged for the simple meals. Marget was very voluble, and the difficulty was to keep her to the subject under discussion. She mixed up orders for the dinner with facts about the age of her relations in the most distracting way.
"Petaty-soup! Aweel, the Maister likes them thick. As I was sayin', ma Aunty Marget has worked hard a' her days, she's haen a dizzen bairns, and noo she's ninety-fower an' needs no specs."
"Dear me," said Elizabeth, edging towards the door. "Well, I'll order the fish and the other things; and remember oatcakes with the potato-soup, please."
She was half-way up the kitchen stairs when Marget put her head round the door and said, "That's to say if she's aye leevin', an' I've heard no word to the contrary."
Elizabeth telephoned the orders, then proceeded to dust the drawing-room—one of her daily duties. It was a fairly large room, papered in soft green; low white bookcases on which stood pieces of old china lined three sides; on the walls were etchings and prints, and over the fireplace hung a really beautiful picture by a famous artist of Elizabeth's mother as a girl. A piano, a table or two, a few large arm-chairs, and a sofa covered in bright chintz made up the furniture of what was a singularly lovable and home-like room.
Elizabeth's dusting of the drawing-room was something of a ceremonial: it needed three dusters. With a silk duster she dusted the white bookcases and the cherished china; the chair legs and the tables and the polished floor needed an ordinary duster; then she got a selvyt-cloth and polished the Sheffield-plate, the brass candlesticks and tinder-boxes. After that she shook out the chintz curtains, plumped up the cushions, and put her dusters in their home in a bag that hung on the shutter. "That's one job done," she said to herself, as she stopped to look out of the window.
The Setons' house stood in a wide, quiet road, with villas and gardens on both sides. It was an ordinary square villa, but it was of grey stone and fairly old, and it had