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Updated: May 3, 2025
A child in a faded tam-o'-shanter that had once been baby blue, and a shoddy coat of a glaring, unpropitious newness, was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a hansom seat, and gazing soberly out at the traffic of Fifth Avenue.
He liked his fat round shape, his rough, untidy grey hair, his scarlet slippers, his blue tam-o'-shanter, the smudges of paint sometimes to be discovered on his cheeks, and the jingling noises he made in his pocket with his money. He was certainly more fun than Aunt Amy. There, then, they all were with their presents and their birthday faces.
I told myself that I must be ready for him. It would never do for him to arrive, and find no one to meet him. On the 28th of July I started off as usual. I wore a short tweed skirt, brown stockings my ankles were, and are, good a calico blouse, and a red tam-o'-shanter. Ponto barked at my heels. In one hand I carried my blue twill bathing-gown. In the other a miniature alpenstock.
The steamer had picked him up at Halifax a cold dawn, with a few pinched faces looking over the rail. Forgive him if he swaggered up the gangway. He was twenty-two, he was a lieutenant, and he was a fighting man. The girl in the story saw him then. She was up and about, in a short sport suit, with a white tam-o'-shanter on her head and a white woolen scarf tucked round her neck.
His pal, who didn't come up much higher than his elbow, stepping forward exhibited a pale face with a long drooping nose and no chin to speak of. He seemed to have just scrambled out of a dust-bin in a tam-o'-shanter cap and a tattered soldier's coat much too long for him. Being so deadly white he looked like a horrible dirty invalid in a ragged dressing-gown.
It was then we saw the other canoes. The girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was in the first one. They glanced at us curiously as they passed, and the P.T.S. that is the way we grew to speak of the pink tam-o'-shanter raised one hand in the air, which is a form of canoe greeting, probably less upsetting to the equilibrium than a vigorous waving of the arm.
A rainbow sweater, dirty and the worse for wear, clung loosely to his broad shoulders, and a red cotton handkerchief was knotted in sailor fashion about his throat. A fisherman's tam-o'-shanter on his close-clipped head, and dungaree trousers and heavy brogans completed his outfit.
"Really?" "No, not really. Only to the back and front of us usually. You'll have fifteen minutes to get into a walking suit if you care to; if you don't, just put on a big coat. It's raw out to-day." Blue Bonnet preferred to freshen up. She brushed the tumbled hair, bathed her face in cold water, and put on a very smart-looking little grey suit with a Norfolk jacket and tam-o'-shanter to match.
At a quarter-past seven came a low knock, and Miriam entered. "All alone?" she said. "Yes." As if at home, she took off her tam-o'-shanter and her long coat, hanging them up. It gave him a thrill. This might be their own house, his and hers. Then she came back and peered over his work. "What is it?" she asked. "Still design, for decorating stuffs, and for embroidery."
The liner's deck canted slowly to leeward, went over more and more, beyond what it had done yet, and a pretty little girl with dark curls riotous from under her red tam-o'-shanter, ran down, and brought up against us violently with both hands, laughing heartily. We laughed too. Looking seawards, I saw receding the broad green hill, snow-capped, which had lifted us and let us down.
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