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Updated: June 15, 2025
She stole noiselessly as a shadow through the outer dormitory, passing the rows of sleepers with bated breath, and not without a parting glance of triumph at the bed where her rival, Elizabeth Grant, was curled up. Down the wooden stair, her bare feet waking no echoes, glided Baubie, and into the school-room, which looked out on the front green.
The stream was low, and it hurried along over its stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as great a hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart, whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street beyond.
The gate was opened from within the wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she and Baubie walked up the little flagged path together. As the gate clanged to behind them Baubie looked back involuntarily and sighed. "Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very kind to you here. And it will be just a good home for you."
At last the clock began to chime eight, and before it was half done the wicket in the great door opened with a noisy clang after a preliminary rattle. The next moment the wicket had clapped to again. Wishart glanced back at it, sighed once or twice, and blinked his eyes as though the sunlight were too strong for them. Baubie, scarce breathing, watched him as a cat watches just before she springs.
The brown wincey and the coarse apron seemed to her the neophyte's robe, betokening Baubie's conversion from arab nomadism to respectability and from a vagabond trade to decorous industry. "Now, Baubie, you can knit: I mean to give you needles and worsted to knit yourself stockings. Won't that be nice? I am sure you never knitted stockings for yourself before."
Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant, then raised her eyes for the first time directly to her questioner's face: "He used to be a Christy man, but he canna be that any longer, sae he goes wi' boords." "Why cannot he be a Christy man any longer?"
I just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye! Kate, stop here till they are all bedded and turn off yon gas." Long before the gas was extinguished Baubie had retired into darkness beneath the bed-clothes, rage and mortification swelling her small heart. Good-for-nothing street-songs! Tinkler! Mrs. Duncan's scornful epithets rang in her ears and cut her to the quick.
Baubie felt snubbed and lonely, and drawing back from the window she sat down on the edge of her bed to wait events. Accustomed as she was to excitement, the experiences of the last few days were of a nature to affect even stronger nerves than hers, and the unwonted bodily sensations caused by the bath and change of garments seemed to intensify her consciousness of novelty and restraint.
"Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up. She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying.
Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father his dinner. So she slipped over to that corner of the big kitchen which was allotted to the Wishart family and possessed herself of a piece of a loaf which was hidden away there.
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