Sunrise among the mountains. Who that has ever seen it can forget it?
Sunny’s mamma never could.
Arriving here after dark, she knew no more of the place than the child
did. But the first thing she did on waking next morning was to creep
past the sofa where Sunny lay,--oh, so fast asleep! having had a
good scream overnight, as was natural after all her fatigues,--steal
cautiously to the window, and look out.
Such a sight! At the foot of a green slope, or sort of rough lawn,
lay the little loch so often spoken of, upon which Sunny was to go
a-fishing and catch big salmon with Maurice’s papa. Round it was a
ring of mountains, so high that they seemed to shut out half the sky.
These were reflected in the water, so solidly and with such a sharp,
clear outline, that one could hardly believe it was only a reflection.
Above their summit was one mass of deep rose-colour, and this also was
repeated in the loch, so that you could not tell which was reddest,
the water or the sky. Everything was perfectly still; not a ripple
moved, not a leaf stirred, not a bird was awake. An altogether new and
magic world.
Sunny was too much of a baby yet to care for sunrise, or, indeed, for
anything just now, except a good long sleep, so her mamma let her sleep
her fill; and when she woke at last she was as bright as a bird.
Long before she was dressed, she heard down-stairs the voices of the
five little boys who were to be her companions. Their papa and mamma
having no objection to their names being told, I give them, for they
were five very pretty names: Maurice, Phil, Eddie, Franky, and Austin
Thomas. The latter being the youngest, though by no means the smallest
or thinnest, generally had his name in full, with variations, such
as Austin Tummas, or Austin Tummacks. Maurice, too, was occasionally
called Maurie,--but not often, being the eldest, you see.
He was seven, very small for his age, but with a face almost angelic
in its delicate beauty. The first time Sunny saw him, a few months
before, she had seemed quite fascinated by it, put her two hands on
his shoulders, and finally held up her mouth to kiss him,--which she
seldom does to any children, rather preferring “grown-ups,” as she
calls them, for playfellows. She had talked ever since of Maurice,
Maurice’s papa, Maurice’s boat, and especially of Maurice’s “little
baby,” the only sister of the five boys. Yet when he came to greet her
this morning, she was quite shy, and would not play with him or Eddie,
or even Franky, who was nearer her own age; and when her mamma lifted
up Austin Thomas, younger than herself but much bigger in every way,
and petted him a little, this poor little woman fell into great despair.
“Don’t kiss him. I don’t want you to kiss Austin Thomas!” she cried,
and the passion which can rise at times in her merry blue eyes rose
now. She clung to her mamma, almost sobbing.
Of course this was not right, and, as I said before, the little girl
is not a perfect little girl. She is naughty at times, like all of us.
Still, mamma was rather sorry for her. It was difficult for an only
child, accustomed to have her mamma all to herself, to tumble suddenly
into such a crowd of boys, and see that mamma could be kind to and
fond of other children besides her own, as all mothers ought to be,
without taking away one atom from the special mother’s love, which no
little people need be jealous over. Sunny bore the trial pretty well,
on the whole. She did not actually cry,--but she kept fast hold of her
mamma’s gown, and watched her with anxious eyes whenever she spoke to
any other child, and especially to Austin Thomas.
The boys were very kind to her. Maurice went and took hold of her hand,
trying to talk to her in his gentle way; his manners were as sweet as
his face. Eddie, who was stronger and rougher, and more boyish, wanted
her to go down with him to the pier,--a small erection of stones at
the shallow edge of the loch, where two or three boats always lay
moored. Consequently the boys kept tumbling in and out of them,--and
in and out of the water, too, very often,--all day long. But the worst
they ever could get was a good wetting,--except Austin Thomas, who one
day toddled in and slipped down, and, being very fat, could not pull
himself up again; so that, shallow as the water was, he was very near
being drowned. But Maurice and Eddie were almost “water babies,”--so
thoroughly at home in the loch,--and Eddie, though under six years old,
could already handle an oar.
“I can _low_” (row,--he could not speak plain yet). “I once lowed
grandpapa all across the loch. Shall I low you and the little girl?”
But mamma rather hesitated at accepting the kind offer, and compromised
the matter by going down to the pier with Sunny in her arms, to watch
Eddie “low,”--about three yards out and back again,--in a carefully
moored boat. Sunny immediately wanted to go too, and mamma promised her
she should, after breakfast, when papa was there to take care of her.
So the little party went back to the raised terrace in front of the
house, where the sun was shining so bright, and where Phil, who was in
delicate health, stood looking on with his pale, quiet face,--sadly
quiet and grave for such a child,--and Franky, who was reserved and
shy, stopped a moment in his solitary playing to notice the newcomer,
but did not offer to go near her. Austin Thomas, however, kept pulling
at her with his stout, chubby arms, but whether he meant caressing or
punching it was difficult to say. Sunny opposed a dignified resistance,
and would not look at Austin Thomas at all.
“Mamma, I want to stop with you. May Sunny stop with you?” implored
she. “You said Sunny should go in the boat with you.”
Mamma always does what she says, if she possibly can, and, besides, she
felt a sympathy for her lonely child, who had not been much used to
play with other children. So she kept Sunny beside her till they went
down together--papa too--for their first row on the loch.
Such a splendid day! Warm but fresh--how could it help being fresh
in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of
opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as young as
she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it was long
since they had had a holiday. This was the very perfection of one, when
everybody did exactly as they liked; which consisted chiefly in doing
nothing from morning till night.
Sunny was the only person who objected to idleness. She must always be
doing something.
“I want to catch fishes,” said she, after having sat quiet by mamma’s
side in the stern of the boat for about three minutes and a half:
certainly not longer, though it was the first time she had ever been
in a boat in all her life, and the novelty of her position sufficed to
sober her for just that length of time. “I want to catch big salmon all
by my own self.”
A fishing-rod had, just as a matter of ceremony, been put into the
boat; but as papa held the two oars, and mamma the child, it was
handed over to Lizzie, who sat in the bow. However, not a single trout
offering to bite, it was laid aside, and papa’s walking-stick used
instead. This was shorter, more convenient, and had a beautiful hooked
handle, which could catch floating leaves. Leaves were much more
easily caught than fishes, and did quite as well.
[Illustration: Little Sunshine goes fishing.]
The little girl had now her heart’s desire. She was in a boat fishing.
“Sunny has caught a fish! Such a big fish!” cried she, in her shrillest
treble of delight, every time that event happened. And it happened
so often that the bench was soon quite “soppy” with wet leaves. Then
she gave up the rod, and fished with her hands, mamma holding her as
tight as possible, lest she should overbalance, and be turned into a
fish herself. But water _will_ wet; and mamma could not save her from
getting her poor little hands all blue and cold, and her sleeves soaked
through. She did not like this; but what will not we endure, even at
two and three-quarters old, in pursuit of some great ambition? It was
not till her hands were numbed, and her pinafore dripping, that Sunny
desisted from her fishing, and then only because her attention was
caught by something else even more attractive.
“What’s that, mamma? What’s that?”
“Water-lilies.”
Papa, busily engaged in watching his little girl, had let the boat
drift upon a shoal of them, which covered one part of the loch like a
floating island. They were so beautiful, with their leaves lying like
green plates flat on the surface of the water, and their white flowers
rising up here and there like ornamental cups. No wonder the child was
delighted.
“Sunny wants a water-lily,” said she, catching the word, though she
had never heard it before. “May Sunny have one, two water-lilies? Two
water-lilies! Please, mamma?”
This was more easily promised than performed, for, in spite of papa’s
skill, the boat always managed to glide either too far off, or too
close to, or right on the top of the prettiest flowers; and when
snatched at, they always would dive down under water, causing the boat
to lurch after them in a way particularly unpleasant. At last, out
of about a dozen unsuccessful attempts, papa captured two expanded
flowers, and one bud, all with long stalks. They were laid along the
seat of the boat, which had not capsized, nor had anybody tumbled out
of it,--a thing that mamma considered rather lucky, upon the whole, and
insisted on rowing away out of the region of water-lilies.
“Let us go up the canal, then,” said papa, whom his host had already
taken there, to show him a very curious feature of the loch.
Leading out of one end of it, and communicating between it and a stream
that fed it from the neighbouring glen, was a channel, called “the
canal.” Unlike most Highland streams, it was as still as a canal; only
it was natural, not artificial. Its depth was so great, that a stick
fifteen feet long failed to find the bottom, which, nevertheless, from
the exceeding clearness of the water, could be seen quite plain, with
the fishes swimming about, and the pebbles, stones, or roots of trees
too heavy to float, lying as they had lain, undisturbed, year after
year. The banks, instead of shallowing off, went sheer down, as deep
as in the middle, so that you could paddle close under the trees that
fringed them,--gnarled old oaks, queerly twisted rowans or beeches, and
nut-trees with trunks so thick and branches so wide-spreading, that
the great-great-grandfathers of the glen must have gone nutting there
generations back.
Yet this year they were as full as ever of nuts, the gathering of which
frightened mamma nearly as much as the water-lilies. For papa, growing
quite excited, _would_ stand up in the boat and pluck at the branches,
and would not see that nutting on dry land, and nutting in a boat
over fifteen or twenty feet of water, were two very different things.
Even the little girl, imitating her elders, made wild snatches at the
branches, and it was the greatest relief to mamma’s mind when Sunny
turned her attention to cracking her nuts, which her sharp little teeth
did to perfection.
“Shall I give you one, mamma? Papa, too?” And she administered them
by turns out of her mouth, which, if not the politest, was the most
convenient way. At last she began singing a song to herself, “Three
little nuts all together! three little nuts all together!” Looking into
the little girl’s shut hands, mamma found--what she in all her long
life had never found but once before, and that was many, many years
ago--a triple nut,--a “lucky” nut; as great a rarity as a four-leaved
shamrock.
“Oh, what a prize! will Sunny give it to mamma?” (which she did
immediately). “And mamma will put it carefully by, and keep it for
Sunny till she is grown a big girl.”
“Sunny is a big girl now; Sunny cracks nuts for papa and mamma.”
Nevertheless, mamma kept the triple nut, as she remembered her own
mamma keeping the former one, when she herself was a little girl. When
Sunny grows a woman, she will find both.
Besides nuts, there were here and there along the canal-side long
trailing brambles, with such huge blackberries on them,--blackberries
that seem to take a malicious pleasure in growing where nobody can get
at them. Nobody could gather them except out of a boat, and then with
difficulty. The best of them had, after all, to be left to the birds.
Oh, what a place this canal must have been for birds in spring! What
safe nests might be built in these overhanging trees! what ceaseless
songs sung there from morning till night! Now, being September, there
were almost none. Dead silence brooded over the sunshiny crags and
the motionless loch. When, far up among the hills, there was heard
the crack of a gun,--Maurice’s papa’s gun, for it could of course be
no other,--the sound, echoed several times over, was quite startling.
What had been shot,--a grouse, a snipe, a wild duck? Perhaps it was
a roe-deer? Papa was all curiosity; but mamma, who dislikes shooting
altogether, either of animals or men, and cannot endure the sight of a
gun, even unloaded, was satisfied with hearing it at a distance, and
counting its harmless echoes from mountain to mountain.
What mountains they were!--standing in a circle, gray, bare, silent,
with their peaks far up into the sky. Some had been climbed by the
gentlemen in this shooting-lodge or by Donald, the keeper, but it
was hard work, and some had never been climbed at all. The clouds
and mists floated over them, and sometimes, perhaps, a stray grouse,
or capercailzie, or ptarmigan, paid them a visit, but that was all.
They were too steep and bare even for the roe-deer. Yet, oh! how grand
they looked, grand and calm, like great giants, whom nothing small and
earthly could affect at all.
The mountains were too big, as yet, for Little Sunshine. Her baby eyes
did not take them in. She saw them, of course, but she was evidently
much more interested in the nuts overhead, and the fishes under water.
And when the boat reached “The Bower,” she thought it more amusing
still.
“The Bower,” so called, was a curious place, where the canal grew so
narrow, and the trees so big, that the overarching boughs met in the
middle, forming a natural arbour,--only of water, not land,--under
which the boat swept for a good many yards. You had to stoop your head
to avoid being caught by the branches, and the ferns and moss on either
bank grew so close to your hand, that you could snatch at them as you
swept by, which Little Sunshine thought the greatest fun in the world.
“Mamma, let me do it. Please, let Sunny do it her own self.”
To do a thing “all my own self” is always a great attraction to this
independent little person, and her mamma allows it whenever possible.
Still there are some things which mamma may do, and little people
may not, and this was one of them. It was obliged to be forbidden as
dangerous, and Little Sunshine clouded over almost to tears. But she
never worries her mamma for things, well aware that “No,” means no, and
“Yes,” yes; and that neither are subject to alteration. And the boat
being speedily rowed out of temptation’s way into the open loch again,
she soon found another amusement.
On the loch, besides water-fowl, such as wild ducks, teal, and the
like, lived a colony of geese. They had once been tame geese belonging
to the farm, but they had emigrated, and turned into wild geese, making
their nests wherever they liked, and bringing up their families in
freedom and seclusion. As to catching them like ordinary geese, it
was hopeless; whenever wanted for the table they had to be shot like
game. This catastrophe had not happened lately, and they swam merrily
about,--a flock of nine large, white, lively, independent birds, which
could be seen far off, sailing about like a fleet of ships on the quiet
waters of the loch. They would allow you to row within a reasonable
distance of them, just so close and no closer, then off they flew in a
body, with a great screeching and flapping of wings,--geese, even wild
geese, being rather unwieldy birds.
Their chief haunt was a tiny island just at the mouth of the canal, and
there papa rowed, just to have a look at them, for one was to be shot
for the Michaelmas dinner. (It never was, by the by, and, for all I
know, still sails cheerfully upon its native loch.)
“Oh, the ducks--the ducks!” (Sunny calls all water-birds ducks.) She
clapped her hands, and away they flew, right over her head, at once
frightening and delighting her; then watched them longingly until they
dropped down again, and settled in the farthest corner of the loch.
“Might Sunny go after them? Might Sunny have a dear little duck to play
with?”
The hopelessness of which desire might have made her turn melancholy
again, only just then appeared, rowing with great energy, bristling
with fishing-rods, and crowded with little people as well as
“grown-ups,” the big boat. It was so busy that it hardly condescended
to notice the little pleasure-boat, with only idle people, sailing
about in the sunshine, and doing nothing more useful than catching
water-lilies and frightening geese.
Still the little boat greeted the large one with an impertinent hail of
“Ship ahoy! what ship’s that?” and took in a cargo of small boys, who,
as it was past one o’clock, were wanted home to the nursery dinner.
And papa rowed the whole lot of them back to the pier, where everybody
was safely landed. Nobody tumbled in, and nobody was drowned,--which
mamma thought, on the whole, was a great deal to be thankful for.