the track across the field where the burn rins? It's a short cut. The
coach'll have to gang roond by the brig. Rin, lassie!"
He released Susy, who sprang down the bank, crossed the streamlet by a
plank bridge, and ran into the cottage, where she found Mrs Laidlaw in
the passage, with eager eyes, but labouring under powerful
self-restraint.
"Mother!" exclaimed Susy, flinging her arms round the stout old woman's
neck.
"Eh!--my bonnie wee doo!" said Mrs Laidlaw, as she looked kindly down
on the little head and stroked the fair hair with her toil-worn hands,
while a venerable old man stood beside her, looking somewhat imbecile,
and blowing his nose.
Just then the carriage rolled up to the door, and Mrs Laidlaw, leaving
her "auld man" for a few minutes to do the honours of the house, retired
to her chamber, and there on her knees confessed, thankfully, that she,
like her son, had been effectually conquered by a "waux doll!"
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Reader, what more can we say? Is it necessary to add that, the two
principals in the business being well pleased, everybody else was
satisfied? We think not. But it may not be uninteresting to state
that, from that auspicious day, a regular system of annual visitation
was established between Bawbylon and the Braes of Yarrow, which held
good for many a year; one peculiarity of the visitation being that the
Bawbylonians and their progeny revelled on the braes chiefly in summer,
while the Yarrowites, with their bairns, always took their southern
flight in winter. Thus our two old women, Mrs Laidlaw and chimney-pot
Liz--who fought rather shy of each other at first, but became mutual
admirers at last--led, as it were, a triple life; now on the sunny
slopes and amid the sweet influences of the braes, anon in the smoke and
the unsavoury odours of the slums, and sometimes amid the refinements
and luxury of the "West End," in all of which situations they were fain
to confess that "the ways of God are wonderful and past finding out."
Of course David Laidlaw did not fail to redeem his promise to revisit
the thieves' den, and many a man and youth was he the means of plucking
from the jaws of spiritual death during his occasional and frequent
visits to London--in which work he was ably seconded by Tommy Splint,
when that volatile spirit grew up to manhood. And among their
coadjutors none were more helpful in the work of bringing souls to
Christ than Mrs Rampy and her bosom-friend Mrs Blathers.
Strange to say, Liz came to her end in a garret after all. On a raw
November day she went, under the care of Susy, to visit an old friend
near Cherub Court, in a garret not very unlike her old home. While
there she was struck down. There was no pain--apparently no disease;
simply a sudden sinking of the vital powers. They laid the dear old
woman on her friend's bed, and in half-an-hour she had passed away,
while the faithful Susy held her hand and whispered words from the
Master in her ear. Thus old Liz, having finished her grand work on
earth, was transplanted from the Garret in the slums to the Garden of
the Lord.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Garret and the Garden, by R.M. Ballantyne