She stood with a curious, twirly wooden candlestick in her hand in the midst of a house that was dead dumb and desperate dark and smelled deliciously of things to eat. Even herself, who had been at the making of most of them the day before, and had, by God's grace, still much of a child's appetite, could not but sniff with a childish satisfaction at this air of a celestial grocery--of plum-puddings and currant-buns, apples and oranges, cordials and spices, toffee and the angelic treacly sweet we call Black Man--her face lit rosily by the candle low, a woman small and soft and sappy, with the most wanton reddish hair, and a briskness of body that showed no sign as yet of her accomplished years. What they were I will never tell you; but this I'll say, that even if they had been eighty she was the kind to cheerily dance a quadrille. The daft bell, so plainly in the jovial mood of Wanton Wully Oliver, infected her: she smiled to herself in a way she had when remembering droll things or just for simple jollity, and whoever saw Bell Dyce smile to herself had never the least doubt after that she was a darling. Over the tenements of the town the song of the bell went rollicking, and in its hiccoughing pauses went wonderfully another sound far, far removed in spirit and suggestion--the clang of wild geese calling: the “honk, honk” of the ganders and the challenge of their ladies come down adrift in the snow from the bitter north. But there was no answer from the maid in the kitchen. She had rolled less deliberately than was usual from her blankets to the summons of the six-o'clock bell, and already, with the kitchen window open, her bounteous form surged over the two sashes that were always so conveniently low and handy for a gossip with any friendly passer-by on the pavement. She drank the air of the clean, chill morning dark, a heady thing like old Tom Watson's autumn ale, full of the sentiment of the daft days. She tilted an ear to catch the tune of the mail-boy's song that now was echoing mellow from the cobwebbed gloom of the stable stalls, and, making a snowball from the drift of the window-ledge, she threw it, woman wise, aimlessly into the street with a pretence at combat. The chill of the snow stung sweet in the hot palm of her, for she was young and strong. “Kate, you wretch!” cried a voice behind her. She drew in her head, to find her mistress in the kitchen with the candlestick in her hand. “Oh, m'em,” cried the maid, no way abashed, banging up the window and hurriedly crushing her more ample parts under the final hooks and eyes of her morning wrapper--“oh, m'em, what a start you gave me! I'm all in a p-p-palpitation. I was just takin' one mouthful of air and thinkin' to myself yonder in the Gaelic that it was time for me to be comin' in and risin' right.” “A happy New Year to you, Kate MacNeill,” said the mistress, taking her hand.