nice and ready for my nephew who comes from America with the four o’clock coach.”

“America!” cried the maid, dropping a saucepan lid on the floor in her astonishment.  “My stars!  Did I not think it was from Chickagoo?”

“And Chicago is in America, Kate,” said her mistress.

“Is it? is it?  Mercy on me, how was Kate to know?  I only got part of my education,—up to the place where you carry one and add ten.  America!  Dear me, just fancy!  The very place that I’m so keen to go to.  If I had the money, and was in America—”

It was a familiar theme; Kate had not got fully started on it when her mistress fled from the kitchen and set briskly about her morning affairs.

And gradually the household of Dyce the lawyer awoke wholly to a day of unaccustomed stillness and sound, for the deep snow piled in the street and hushed the traffic of wheel, and hoof, and shoe, but otherwise the morning was cheerful with New Year’s day noise.  For the bell-ringing of Wanton Wully was scarcely done, died down in a kind of brazen chuckle, and the “honk, honk” of the wild geese sped seaward over gardens and back lanes, strange wild music of the north, far-fetched and undomestic,—when the fife band shrilly tootled through the town to the tune of “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?”  Ah, they were the proud, proud men, their heads dizzy with glory and last night’s wine, their tread on air.  John Taggart drummed—a mighty drummer, drunk or sober, who so loved his instrument he sometimes went to bed with it still fastened to his neck, and banged to-day like Banagher, who banged furiously, never minding the tune much, but happy if so be that he made noise enough.  And the fifers were not long gone down the town, all with the wrong step but Johnny Vicar, as his mother thought, when the snow was trampled under the feet of playing children, and women ran out of their houses, and crossed the street, some of them, I declare, to kiss each other, for ’tis a fashion lately come, and most genteel, grown wonderfully common in Scotland.  Right down the middle of the town, with two small flags in his hat and holly in the lapel of his coat, went old Divine the hawker, with a great barrow of pure gold, crying “Fine Venetian oranges! wha’ll buy sweet Venetian oranges?  Nane o’ your foreign trash.  Oranges!  Oranges!—rale New Year oranges, three a penny; bloods, a bawbee each!”

The shops opened just for an hour for fear anybody might want anything, and many there were, you may be sure, who did, for they had eaten and drunken everything provided the night before—which we call Hogmanay,—and now there were currant-loaves and sweety biscuits to buy; shortcake, sugar and lemons, ginger cordial for the boys and girls and United Presbyterians, boiled ham for country cousins who might come unexpected, and P. & A. MacGlashan’s threepenny mutton-pies (twopence if you brought the ashet back), ordinarily only to be had on fair-days and on Saturdays, and far renowned for value.

Miss Minto’s Millinery and Manteau Emporium was discovered at daylight to have magically outlined its doors and windows during the night with garlands and festoons of spruce and holly, whereon the white rose bloomed in snow; and Miss Minto herself, in a splendid crimson cloak down to the heels, and cheeks like cherries, was standing with mittens and her five finger-rings on, in the middle door, saying in beautiful gentle English “A Happy New Year” to every one who passed—even to George Jordon, the common cowherd, who was always a little funny in his intellects, and, because his trousers were bell-mouthed and hid his feet, could never remember whether he was going to his work or coming from it, unless he consulted the Schoolmaster.  “The same to you, m’em, excuse my hands,” said poor George, just touching the tips of her fingers.  Then, because he had been stopped and slewed a little from his course, he just went back the way he had come.

Too late got up the red-faced sun, too late to laugh at Wanton Wully’s jovial bell, too late for Taggart’s mighty drumming, but a jolly winter sun,—’twas all that was wanted among the chimneys to make the day complete.

First of all to rise in Dyce’s house, after the mistress and the maid, was the master, Daniel Dyce himself.

And now I will tell you all about Daniel Dyce: it is that behind his back he was known as Cheery Dan.

“Your bath is ready, Dan,” his sister had cried, and he rose and went with chittering teeth to it, looked at it a moment, and put a hand in the water.  It was as cold as ice, because that water, drinking which, men never age, comes from high mountain bens.

“That for ye to-day!” said he to the bath, snapping his fingers.  “I’ll see ye far enough first!”  And contented himself with a slighter wash than usual, and shaving.  As he shaved he hummed all the time, as was his habit, an ancient air of his boyhood; to-day it was

“Star of Peace, to wanderers weary,”

with not much tone but a great conviction,—a tall, lean, clean-shaven man of over fifty, with a fine long nose, a ruddy cheek, keen grey eyes, and plenty of room in his clothes, the pockets of him so large and open it was no wonder so many people tried, as it were, to put their hands into them.  And when he was dressed he did a droll thing, for from one of his pockets he took what hereabouts we call a pea-sling, that to the rest of the world is a catapult, and having shut one eye, and aimed with the weapon, and snapped the rubber several times with amazing gravity, he went upstairs into an attic and laid it on a table at the window with a pencilled note, in which he wrote—

A New Year’s Day Present
for a Good Boy
from
An Uncle who does not like Cats.

He looked round the little room that seemed very bright and cheerful, for its window gazed over the garden to the east and to the valley where was seen the King’s highway.  “Wonderful! wonderful!” he said to himself.  “They have made an extraordinary job of it.  Very nice indeed, but just a shade ladylike.  A stirring boy would prefer fewer fal-lals.”

There was little indeed to suggest the occupation of a stirring boy in that attic, with its draped dressing-table in lilac print, its looking-glass flounced in muslin and pink lover’s-knots, its bower-like bed canopied and curtained with green lawn, its shy scent of pot-pourri and lavender.  A framed text in crimson wools, the work of Bell Dyce when she was in Miss Mushet’s seminary, hung over the mantelpiece enjoining all beholders to

Watch and Pray.

Mr Dyce put both hands into his trousers pockets, bent a little, and heaved in a sort of chirruping laughter.  “Man’s whole duty, according to Bell Dyce,” he said, “‘Watch and Pray’; but they do not need to have the lesson before them continually yonder in Chicago, I’ll warrant.  Yon’s the place for watching, by all accounts, however it may be about the prayer.  ‘Watch and Pray’—h’m!  It should be Watch or Pray—it clearly cannot be both at once with the world the way it is; you might as well expect a man to eat pease-meal and whistle strathspeys at the same time.”

He was humming “Star of Peace”—for the tune he started the morning with usually lasted him all day,—and standing in the middle of the floor contemplating with amusement the ladylike adornment of the room prepared for his Chicago nephew, when a light