CHAPTER VII.
Lifeat the glen went on every day alike, in the simplest, happiest fashion, a sort of paradise of children, as in truth it was. Even the elders lived like children; and big people and little people were together, more or less, all day long. A thing not at all objectionable when the children are good children, as these were.
The boys were noisy, of course, and, after the first hour of the morning, clean faces, hands, and clothes became a difficulty quite insurmountable, in which their mother had to resign herself to fate; as the mamma of five boys, running about wild in the Highlands, necessarily must. But these were good, obedient, gentlemanly little fellows, and, had it been possible to keep them clean and whole, which it wasn’t, very pretty little fellows, too.
Of course they had a few boyish propensities, which increased the difficulty. Maurice, for instance, had an extraordinary love for all creeping things, and especially worms. On the slightestpretence of getting bait to fish with, he would go digging for them, and stuff them into his pockets, whence, if you met him, you were as likely as not to see one or two crawling out. If you remonstrated, he looked unhappy, for Maurice really loved his worms. He cherished them carefully, and did not in the least mind their crawling over his hands, his dress, or his plate. Only, unfortunately, other people did. When scolded, he put his pets meekly aside, but always returned to them with the same love as ever. Perhaps Maurice may turn out a great naturalist some day.
The one idea of Eddie’s life was boats. He was for ever at the little pier waiting a chance of a row, and always wanting to “low” somebody, especially with “two oars,” which he handled uncommonly well for so small a child. Fortunately for him, though not for his papa and the salmon-fishers, the weather was dead calm, so that it was like paddling on a duck-pond; and the loch being shallow just at the pier, except a few good wettings, which he seemed to mind as little as if he were a frog, bright, brave, adventurous Eddie came to no harm.
Nor Franky, who imitated him admiringly whenever he could. But Franky, who was rather a reserved little man, and given to playing alone, had, besides the pier, another favourite play-place,a hollow cut out in the rock to receive the burn which leaped down from the hillside just behind the house. Being close to the kitchen door, it was put to all sorts of domestic uses, being generally full of pots and pans, saucepans and kettles,—not the most advisable playthings, but Franky found them charming. He also unluckily found out something else,—that the hollow basin had an outlet, through which any substance, sent swimming down the swift stream, swam away beautifully for several yards, and then disappeared underground. And the other end of this subterraneous channel being in the loch, of course it disappeared for ever. In this way there vanished mysteriously all sorts of things,—cups and saucers, toys, pinafores, hats; which last Franky was discovered in the act of making away with, watching them floating off with extreme delight. It was no moral crime, and hardly punishable, but highly inconvenient. Sunny’s beloved luggie, which had been carried about with her for weeks, was believed to have disappeared in this way, and, as it could not sink, is probably now drifting somewhere about on the loch, to the great perplexity of the fishes.
Little Phil, alas! was too delicate to be mischievous. He crept about in the sunshine, not playing with anybody, but just looking on at therest, with his pale, sweet, pensive face. He was very patient and good, and he suffered very much. One day, hearing his uncle at family prayers pray that God would make him better, he said, sadly, “If He does, I wish He would make haste about it.” Which was the only complaint gentle, pathetic little Phil was ever heard to utter.
Sunny regarded him with some awe, as “the poor little boy who was so ill.” For herself, she has never yet known what illness is; but she is very sympathetic over it in others. Anybody’s being “not well” will at once make her tender and gentle; as she always was to Phil. He in his turn was very kind to her, lending her his “music,” which was the greatest favour he could bestow or she receive.
This “music” was a box of infantile instruments, one for each boy,—trumpet, drum, fife, etc., making a complete band, which a rash-minded but affectionate aunt had sent them, and with which they marched about all day long, to their own great delight and the corresponding despair of their elders. Phil, who had an ear, would go away quietly with his “music,”—a trumpet, I think it was,—and play it all by himself. But the others simply marched about in procession, each making the biggest noise he could, and watched by Sunny with admiration and envy.Now and then, out of great benevolence, one of the boys would lend her his instrument, and nobody did this so often as Phil, though of them all he liked playing his music the best. The picture of him sitting on the door-step, with his pale fingers wandering over his instrument, and his sickly face looking almost contented as he listened to the sound, will long remain in everybody’s mind. Sunny never objected to her mamma’s carrying him, as he often had to be carried; though he was fully six years old. He was scarcely heavier than the little girl herself. Austin Thomas would have made two of him.
Austin’s chief peculiarity was this amiable fatness. He tumbled about like a roly-poly pudding, amusing everybody, and offending no one but Little Sunshine. But his persistent pursuit of her mamma, whom he insisted on calling “Danmamma” (grandmamma), and following whenever he saw her, was more than the little girl could bear, and she used to knit her brows and look displeased. However, mamma never took any notice, knowing what a misery to itself and all about it is a jealous child.
Amidst these various amusements passed the day. It began at 8A. M., when Sunshine and her mamma usually appeared on the terrace in front of the house. They two were “early birds,” andso they got “the worm,”—that is, a charming preliminary breakfast of milk, bread and butter, and an egg, which they usually ate on the door-step. Sometimes the rest, who had had their porridge, the usual breakfast of Scotch children,—and very nice it is, too,—gathered around for a share; which it was pleasant to give them, for they waited so quietly, and were never rough or rude.
Nevertheless, sometimes difficulties arose. The tray being placed on the gravel, Maurice often sat beside it, and his worms would crawl out of his pocket and on to the bread and butter. Then Eddie now and then spilt the milk, and Austin Thomas would fill the salt-cellar with sand out of the gravel walk, and stir it all up together with the egg-spoon; a piece of untidiness which Little Sunshine resented extremely.
She had never grown reconciled to Austin Thomas. In spite of his burly good-nature, and his broad beaming countenance (which earned him the nickname of “Cheshire,” from his supposed likeness to the Cheshire Cat in “Alice’s Adventures”), she refused to play with him; whenever he appeared, her eye followed him with distrust and suspicion, and when he said “Danmamma,” she would contradict him indignantly.
“It isn’t grandmamma, it’smymamma, my ownmamma. Go away, naughty boy!” If he presumed to touch the said mamma, it was always, “Take me up in your arms, in your own arms,”—so as to prevent all possibility of Austin Thomas’s getting there.
Engaged in single combat
But one unlucky day Austin tumbled down, and, though more frightened than hurt, cried so much that, his own mamma being away, Sunny’s mamma took him and comforted him, soothing him on her shoulder till he ceased sobbing. This was more than human nature could bear. Sunny did nothing at the time, except pull frantically at her mamma’s gown, but shortly afterward she and Austin Thomas were found by themselves, engaged in single combat on the gravel walk.She had seized him by the collar of his frock, and was kicking him with all her might, while he on his part was pommelling at her with both his little fat fists, like an infant prize-fighter. It was a pitched battle, pretty equal on both sides; and conducted so silently, in such dead earnest, that it would have been quite funny,—if it had not been so very wrong.
Of course such things could not be allowed, even in babies under three years old. Sunny’s mamma ran to the spot and separated the combatants by carrying off her own child right away into the house. Sunny was so astonished that she did not say a word. And when she found that her mamma never said a word either, but bore her along in total silence, she was still more surprised. Her bewilderment was at its height, when, shutting the bedroom door, her mamma set her down, and gave her—not a whipping: she objects to whippings under any circumstances—but the severest scolding the child had ever had in her life.
When I say “scolding,” I mean a grave, sorrowful rebuke, showing how wicked it was to kick anybody, and how it grieved mamma that her good little girl should be so exceedingly naughty. Mamma grieved is a reproach under which little Sunny breaks down at once. Her lips began to quiver; she hung her head sorrowfully.
“Sunny had better go into the cupboard,” suggested she.
“Yes, indeed,” mamma replied. “I think the cupboard is the only place for such a naughty little girl; go in at once.”
So poor Sunshine crept solemnly into a large press with sliding doors, used for hanging up clothes, and there remained in silence and darkness all the while her mamma was dressing to go out. At last she put her head through the opening.
“Sunny quite good now, mamma.”
“Very well,” said mamma, keeping with difficulty a grave countenance. “But will Sunny promise never to kick Austin Thomas again?”
“Yes.”
“Then she may come out of the cupboard, and kiss mamma.”
Which she did, with a beaming face, as if nothing at all had happened. But she did not forget her naughtiness. Some days after, she came up, and confidentially informed her mamma, as if it were an act of great virtue, “Mamma, Sunny ’membered her promise. Sunny hasn’t kicked the little boy again.”
After the eight o’clock breakfast, Sunny, her mamma, and the five little boys generally took a walk together, or sat telling stories in frontof the house, till the ten o’clock breakfast of the elders. That over, the party dispersed their several ways, wandering about by land or water, and meeting occasionally, great folks and small, in boats, or by hillsides, or indoors at the children’s one o’clock dinner,—almost the only time, till night, that anybody ever was indoors.
Besides most beautiful walks for the elders, there were, close by the house, endless play-places for the children, each more attractive than the other. The pier on the loch was the great delight; but there was, about a hundred yards from the house, a burn (in fact, burns were always tumbling from the hillside, wherever you went), with a tiny bridge across it, which was a charming spot for little people. There usually assembled a whole parliament of ducks, and hens, and chickens, quacking and clucking and gobbling together, to their own great content and that of the children, especially the younger ones. Thither came Austin Thomas with his nurse Grissel, a thorough Scotch lassie; and Sunny with her English Lizzie; and there the baby, the pet of all, tiny “Miss Mary,” a soft, dainty, cuddling thing of six months old, used to be brought to lie and sleep in the sunshine, watched by Little Sunshine with never-ending interest. She would go anywhere with “the dear little baby.” Thevery intonation of her voice, and the expression of her eyes, changed as she looked at it,—for this little girl is passionately fond of babies.
Farther down the mountain-road was another attractive corner, a stone dike, covered with innumerable blackberries. Though gathered daily, there were each morning more to gather, and they furnished an endless feast for both nurses and children. And really, in this sharp mountain air, the hungriness of both big and little people must have been alarming. How the house-mother ever fed her household, with the only butcher’s shop ten miles off, was miraculous. For very often the usual resort of shooting-lodges entirely failed; the game was scarce, and hardly worth shooting, and in this weather the salmon absolutely refused to be caught. Now and then a mournful-looking sheep was led up to the door, and offered for sale alive, to be consumed gradually as mutton. But when you have to eat an animal right through, you generally get a little tired of him at last.
The food that never failed, and nobody ever wearied of, was the trout; large dishes of which appeared, and disappeared, every morning at breakfast. A patient guest, who could not go shooting, used to sit fishing for trout, hour by hour, in the cheerfullest manner; thankful for small blessings(of a pound or a pound and a half at most), and always hoping for the big salmon which he had travelled three hundred miles to fish for, but which never came. Each day, poor gentleman! he watched the dazzlingly bright sky, and, catching the merest shadow of a cloud, would say courageously, “It looks like rain! Perhaps the salmon may bite to-morrow.”
Of afternoons, Sunny and her mamma generally got a little walk and talk alone together along the hillside road, noticing everything, and especially the Highland cattle, who went about in family parties,—the big bull, a splendid animal, black or tawny, looking very fierce, but really offering no harm to anybody; half a dozen cows, and about twice that number of calves. Such funny little things these were! not smooth, like English calves, but with quantities of shaggy hair hanging about them, and especially over their eyes. Papa used to say that his little girl, with her incessant activity, and her yellow curls tossing wildly about on her forehead, was very like a Highland calf.
At first, Sunny was rather afraid of these extraordinary beasts, so different from Southern cattle; but she soon got used to them, and as even the big bull did nothing worse than look at her, and pass her by, she would stand andwatch them feeding with great interest, and go as close to them as ever she was allowed. Once she even begged for a little calf to play with, but as it ran away up the mountainside as active as a deer, this was not practicable. And on the whole she liked the ducks and chickens best.
And for a change she liked to walk with mamma around the old-fashioned garden. What a beautiful garden it was!—shut in with high walls, and sloping southward down to the loch. No doubt many a Highland dame, generations back, had taken great pleasure in it, for its fruit-trees were centuries old, and the box edging of its straight, smooth gravel walks was a picture in itself. Also a fuchsia hedge, thick with crimson blossoms, which this little girl, who is passionately fond of flowers, could never pass without begging for “a posie, to stick in my little bosie,” where it was kissed and “loved” until, generally soon enough, it got broken and died.
Equally difficult was it to pass the apples which lay strewn about under the long lines of espaliers, where Maurice and Eddie were often seen hovering about with an apple in each hand, and plenty more in each pocket. The Highland air seemed to give them unlimited digestion, but Sunny’s mamma had occasionally to say to her little girl that quiet denial, whichcaused a minute’s sobbing, and then, known to be inevitable, was submitted to.
The child found it hard sometimes that little girls might not do all that little boys may. For instance, between the terrace and the pier was a wooden staircase with a hand-rail; both rather old and rickety. About this hand-rail the boys were for ever playing, climbing up it and sliding down it. Sunny wanted to do the same, and one day her mamma caught her perched astride at the top, and preparing to “slidder” down to the bottom, in imitation of Eddie, who was urging her on with all his might. This most dangerous proceeding for little girls with frocks had to be stopped at once; mamma explaining the reason, and insisting that Sunny must promise never to do it again. Poor little woman, she was very sad; but she did promise, and, moreover, she kept her word. Several times mamma saw her stand watching the boys with a mournful countenance, but she never got astride on the hand-rail again. Only once, a sudden consolation occurred to her.
“Mamma, ’posing Sunny were some day to grow into a little boy,thenshe might slide down the ladder?”
“Certainly, yes!” answered mamma, with great gravity, and equal sincerity. In the meantimeshe perfectly trusted her reliable child, who never does anything behind her back any more than before her face. And she let her clamber about as much as was practicable, up and down rocks, and over stone dikes, and in and out of burns, since, within certain limitations, little girls should be as active as little boys. And by degrees, Sunny, a strong, healthy, energetic child, began to follow the boys about everywhere.
There was a byre and a hay-house, where the children were very fond of playing, climbing up a ladder and crawling along the roof to the ridge-tiles, along which Eddie would drag himself, astraddle, from end to end, throwing Sunny into an ecstasy of admiration. To climb up to the top of a short ladder and be held there, whence she could watch Eddie crawl like a cat from end to end of the byre, and wait till he slid down the tiles again, was a felicity for which she would even sacrifice the company of “the dear little baby.”
But, after all, the pier was the great resort. From early morning till dark, two or three of the children were always to be seen there, paddling in the shallows like ducks, with or without shoes and stockings, assisting at every embarkation or landing of the elders, and generally, by force of entreaties, getting—Eddie especially—“alow” on their own account several times a day. Even Sunny gradually came to find such fascination in the water, and in Eddie’s company, that if her mamma had not kept a sharp lookout after her, and given strict orders that, without herself, Sunny was never under any pretext to go on the loch at all, the two children, both utterly fearless, would certainly have been discovered sailing away like the wise men of Gotham who “went to sea in a bowl.” Probably with the same ending to their career; that
“If the bowl had been stronger,My song would have been longer!”
“If the bowl had been stronger,My song would have been longer!”
“If the bowl had been stronger,
My song would have been longer!”
After Little Sunshine’s holiday was done, mamma, thinking over the countless risks run, by her own child and these other children, felt thankful that they had all left this beautiful glen alive.