Little Sunshine’s delicious holiday--equally delicious to her papa and
mamma, too--was now fast drawing to a close. This Sunday sunset, more
gorgeous perhaps than ever, was the last that the assembled party of
big and little people watched together from the terrace. By the next
Sunday, they knew, all of them would be scattered far and wide, in all
human probability never again to meet, as a collective party, in this
world. For some of them had come from the “under world,” the Antipodes,
and were going back thither in a few months, and all had their homes
and fortunes widely dispersed, so as to make their chances of future
reunion small.
They were sorry to part, I think,--even those who were nearly strangers
to one another,--and those who were friends were very sorry indeed. The
children, of course, were not sorry at all, for they understood nothing
about the matter. For instance, it did not occur in the least to Sunny
or to Austin Thomas (still viewing one another with suspicious eyes,
and always on the brink of war, though Sunny kept her promise, and did
not attack again), that the next time they met might be as big boy and
girl, learning lessons, and not at all disposed to fight; or else as
grown young man and woman, obliged to be polite to one another whether
they liked it or not.
But the elders were rather grave, and watched the sun set, or rather
not the sun,--for he was always invisible early in the afternoon, the
house being placed on the eastern slope of the hill,--but the sunset
glow on the range of mountains opposite. Which, as the light gradually
receded upward, the shadow pursuing, had been, evening after evening,
the loveliest sight imaginable. This night especially, the hills seemed
to turn all colours, fading at last into a soft gray, but keeping their
outlines distinct long after the loch and valley were left dark.
So, good-bye, sun! When he rose again, two of the party would be on
board a steamboat,--_the_ steamboat, for there was but one,--sailing
away southward, where there were no hills, no lochs, no salmon-fishing,
no idle, sunshiny days,--nothing but work, work, work. For “grown-ups,”
as Sunny calls them, do really work; though, as a little girl once
observed pathetically to Sunny’s mamma, “Oh, I wish I was grown up,
and then I might be idle! We children have to work _so_ hard! while
you and my mamma do nothing all day long.” (Oh, dear!)
Well, work is good, and pleasant too; though perhaps Sunny’s papa did
not exactly think so, when he gave her her good-night kiss, which
was also good-bye. For he was to start so early in the morning that
it was almost the middle of the night, in order to catch the steamer
which should touch at the pier ten miles off, between six and seven
A. M. Consequently, there was breakfast by candle-light, and hasty
adieux, and a dreary departure of the carriage under the misty morning
starlight; everybody making an effort to be jolly, and not quite
accomplishing it. Then everybody, or as many as had had courage to
rise, went to bed again, and tried to sleep, with varied success,
Sunny’s mamma with none at all.
It recurred to her, as a curious coincidence, that this very day,
twenty-five years before, after sitting up all night, she had watched,
solemnly as one never does it twice in a lifetime, a glorious sunrise.
She thought she would go out and watch another, from the hillside, over
the mountains.
My children, did you ever watch a sunrise? No? Then go and do it as
soon as ever you can. Not lazily from your bedroom window, but out
in the open air, where you seem to hear and see the earth gradually
waking up, as she does morning after morning, each waking as wonderful
and beautiful as if she had not done the same for thousands of years,
and may do it for thousands more.
When the carriage drove off, it was still starlight,--morning
starlight, pale, dreary, and excessively cold; but now a faint coloured
streak of dawn began to put the stars out, and creep up and up behind
the curves of the eastern hills. Gradually the daylight increased,--it
was clear enough to see things, though everything looked cheerless and
gray. The grass and heather were not merely damp, but soaking wet, and
over the loch and its low-lying shores was spread a shroud of white
mist. There was something almost painful in the intense stillness; it
felt as if all the world were dead and buried, and when suddenly a cock
crew from the farm, he startled one as if he had been a ghost.
But the mountains,--the mountains! Turning eastward, to look at them,
all the dullness, solitude, and dreariness of the lower world vanished.
They stood literally bathed in light, as the sun rose up behind them,
higher and higher, brighter and brighter, every minute. Suddenly an
arrow of light shot across the valley, and touched the flat granite
boulder on which, after a rather heavy climb, Sunny’s mamma had
succeeded in perching herself like a large bird, tucking her feet under
her, and wrapping herself up as tightly as possible in her plaid, as
some slight protection against the damp cold. But when the sunshine
came, chilliness and cheerlessness vanished. And as the beam broadened,
it seemed to light up the whole world.
How she longed for her child, not merely for company, though that would
have been welcome in the extreme solitude, but that she might show
her, what even such baby eyes could not but have seen,--the exceeding
beauty of God’s earth, and told her how it came out of the love of God,
who loved the world and all that was in it. How He loved Sunny, and
would take care of her all her life, as He had taken care of her, and
of her mamma, too. How, if she were good and loved Him back again, He
would be sure to make for her, through all afflictions, a happy life;
since, like the sunrise, “His mercies are new every morning, and His
compassions fail not.”
Warmer and warmer the cold rock grew; a few birds began to twitter, the
cocks crowed from the farmyard, and from one of the cottages a slender
line of blue peat smoke crept up, showing that somebody else was awake
besides Sunny’s mamma; which was rather a comfort,--she was getting
tired of having the world all to herself.
Presently an old woman came out of a cottage-door, and went to the burn
for water, probably to make her morning porridge. A tame sheep followed
her, walking leisurely to the burn and back again, perhaps with an eye
to the porridge-pot afterward. And a lazy pussy-cat also crept out, and
climbed on the roof of the cottage, for a little bit of sunshine before
breakfast. Sunny’s mamma also began to feel that it was time to see
about breakfast, for sunrise on the mountains makes one very hungry.
Descending the hill was worse than ascending, there being no regular
track, only some marks of where the sheep were in the habit of
climbing. And the granite rocks presented a flat, sloping surface,
sometimes bare, sometimes covered with slippery moss, which was not
too agreeable. Elsewhere, the ground was generally boggy with tufts
of heather between, which one might step or jump. But as soon as one
came to a level bit it was sure to be bog, with little streams running
through it, which had to be crossed somehow, even without the small
convenience of stepping-stones.
Once, when her stout stick alone saved her from a sprained ankle, she
amused herself with thinking how in such a case she might have shouted
vainly for help, and how bewildered the old woman at the cottage would
have been on finding out that the large creature, a sheep as she had
probably supposed, sitting on the boulder overhead, which she had
looked up at once or twice, was actually a wandering lady!
It was now half-past seven, and the usual breakfast party on the
door-step was due at eight. Welcome was the sound of little voices, and
the patter of small eager feet along the gravel walk. Sunny’s mamma had
soon her own child in her arms and the other children around her, all
eating bread and butter and drinking milk with the greatest enjoyment.
The sun was now quite warm, and the mist had furled off the loch,
leaving it clear and smooth as ever.
Suddenly Eddie’s sharp eyes caught something there which quite
interrupted his meal. It was a water-fowl, swimming in and out among
the island of water-lilies, and even coming as close inshore as
the pier. Not one of the nine geese, certainly; this bird was dark
coloured, and small, yet seemed larger than the water-hens, which also
were familiar to the children. Some one suggested it might possibly be
a wild duck.
Eddie’s eyes brightened. “Then might I ‘low’ in a boat, with papa’s
gun, and go and shoot it?”
This being a too irregular proceeding, Sunny’s mamma proposed a medium
course, namely, that Eddie should inform his papa that there was a bird
supposed to be a wild duck, and then he might do as he thought best
about shooting it.
Maurice and Eddie were accordingly off like lightning; three of
Maurice’s worms which had taken the opportunity of crawling out of his
pocket and on to the tray, being soon afterward found leisurely walking
over the bread and butter plate. Franky and Austin Thomas took the
excitement calmly, the one thinking it a good chance of eating up his
brothers’ rejected shares, and the other proceeding unnoticed to his
favourite occupation of filling the salt-cellar with sand from the walk.
Soon Donald, who had also seen the bird, appeared, with his master’s
gun all ready, and the master, having got into his clothes in
preternaturally quick time, hurried down to the loch, his boys
accompanying him. Four persons, two big and two little, after one
unfortunate bird! which still kept swimming about, a tiny black dot on
the clear water, as happy and unconscious as possible.
The ladies, too, soon came out and watched the sport from the terrace;
wondering whether the duck was within range of the gun, and whether it
really was a wild duck, or not. A shot, heard from behind the trees,
deepened the interest; and when, a minute after, a boat containing
Maurice, Eddie, their papa, and Donald, was seen to pull off from the
pier, the excitement was so great that nobody thought about breakfast.
“It must be a wild duck; they have shot it; it will be floating on the
water, and they are going after it in the boat.”
“I hope Eddie will not tumble into the water, in his eagerness to pull
the bird out.”
“There,--the gun is in the boat with them! Suppose Maurice stumbles
over it, and it goes off and shoots somebody!”
Such were the maternal forebodings, but nothing of the sort happened,
and by and by, when breakfast was getting exceedingly cold, a little
procession, all unharmed, was seen to wind up from the loch, Eddie and
Maurice on either side of their papa.
He walked between them, shouldering his gun, so that, loaded or not,
it could not possibly hurt his little boys. But he looked extremely
dejected, and so did Donald, who followed, bearing “the body”--of a
poor little dripping, forlorn-looking bird.
“Is that the wild duck?” asked everybody at once.
“Pooh! It wasn’t a wild duck at all. It was only a large water-hen. Not
worth the trouble of shooting, certainly not of cooking. And then we
had all the bother of getting out the gun, and tramping over the wet
grass to get a fair shot, and, after we shot it, of rowing after it, to
fish it up out of the loch. Wretched bird!”
Donald, imitating his master, regarded the booty with the utmost
contempt, even kicking it with his foot as it lay, poor little thing!
But no kicks could harm it now. Sunny only went up and touched it
timidly, stroking its pretty, wet feathers with her soft little hand.
“Mamma, can’t it fly? why doesn’t it get up and fly away? And it is
so cold. Might Sunny warm it?” as she had once tried to warm the only
dead thing she ever saw,--a little field mouse lying on the garden walk
at home, which she put in her pinafore and cuddled up to her little
“bosie,” and carried about with her for half an hour or more.
Quite puzzled, she watched Donald carrying off the bird, and only half
accepted mamma’s explanation that “there was no need to warm it,--it
was gone to its bye-bye, and would not wake up any more.”
Though she was living at a shooting-lodge, this was the only dead thing
Sunny had yet chanced to see, for there was so little game about that
the gentlemen rarely shot any. But this morning one of them declared
that if he walked his legs off over the mountains, he must go and
have a try at something. So off he set, guided by Donald, while the
rest of the party fished meekly for trout, or went along the hill-road
on a still more humble hunt after blackberries. Sometimes they
wondered about the stray sportsman, and listened for gun-shots from
the hills,--the sound of a gun could be heard for so very far in this
still, bright weather.
And when, at the usual dinner-hour, he did not appear, they waited a
little while for him. They were going at length to begin the meal, when
he was seen coming leisurely along the garden walk.
Eager were the inquiries of the master.
“Well,--any grouse?”
“No.”
“Partridges?”
“No.”
“I knew it. There has not been a partridge seen here for years. Snipes,
perhaps?”
“Never saw one.”
“Then what have you been about? Have you shot nothing at all?”
“Not quite nothing. A roe-deer. The first I ever killed in my life.
Here, Donald.”
With all his brevity, the sportsman could not hide the sparkle of his
eye. Donald, looking equally delighted, unloosed the creature, which he
had been carrying around his neck in the most affectionate manner, its
fore legs clasped over one shoulder, and its hind legs over the other,
and laid it down on the gravel walk.
What a pretty creature it was, with its round, slender, shapely limbs,
its smooth satin skin, and its large eyes, that in life would have
been so soft and bright! They were dim and glazed now, though it was
scarcely cold yet.
Everybody gathered around to look at it, and the sportsman told the
whole story of his shot.
“She is a hind, you see; most likely has a fawn somewhere not far
off. For I shot her close by the farm here. I was coming home, not
over-pleased at coming so empty-handed, when I saw her standing on the
hill top, just over that rock there: a splendid shot she was, but so
far off that I never thought I should touch her. However, I took aim,
and down she dropped. Just feel her. She is an admirable creature, so
fat! Quite a picture!”
So it was, but a rather sad one. The deer lay, her graceful head
hopelessly dangling, and bloody drops beginning to ooze from her open
mouth.
Otherwise she might have been asleep,--as innocent. Sunny, who had run
with the boys to see the sight, evidently thought she was.
“Mamma, look at the little baa-lamb, the dear little baa-lamb. Won’t it
wake up?”
Mamma explained that it was not a baa-lamb, but a deer, and there
stopped, considering how to make her child understand that solemn
thing, death; which no child can be long kept in ignorance of, and yet
which is so difficult to explain. Meantime, Sunny stood looking at the
deer, but did not attempt to touch it as she had touched the water-hen.
It was so large a creature to lie there so helpless and motionless. At
last she looked up, with trouble in her eyes.
“Mamma, it won’t wake up. Make it wake up, please!”
“I can’t, my darling!” And there came a choke in mamma’s throat,--this
foolish mamma, who dislikes “sport,”--who looks upon soldiers as
man-slayers, “glory” as a great delusion, and war a heinous crime. “My
little one, the pretty deer has gone to sleep, and nobody can wake it
up again. But it does not suffer. Nothing hurts it now. Come away, and
mamma will tell you more about this another day.”
The little fingers contentedly twined themselves in her mamma’s, and
Sunshine came away, turning back now and then a slightly regretful
look on the poor hind that lay there, the admiration of everybody, and
especially of the gentleman who had shot it.
“The first I ever shot,” he repeated, with great pride. “I only wish
I could stay and eat her. But the rest of you will.” (Except Sunny’s
mamma, who was rather glad to be spared that satisfaction.)
A single day was now all that remained of the visit,--a day which
dawned finer than ever, making it so hard to quit the hills, and the
loch, and all the charms of this beautiful place. Not a cloud on the
sky, not a ripple on the waters, blackberries saying “come gather me,”
by hundreds from every bramble, ferns of rare sort growing on dikes,
and banks, and roots of trees. This whole morning must be spent on the
hillside by Sunny and her mamma, combining business with pleasure, if
possible.
So they took a kitchen knife as an extempore spade; a basket, filled
with provisions, but meant afterwards to carry roots, and the
well-known horn cup, which was familiar with so many burns. Sunny used
it for all sorts of purposes besides drinking; filled it with pebbles,
blackberries, and lastly with some doubtful vegetables, which she
called “ferns,” and dug up, and brought to her mamma to take home “very
carefully.”
Ere long she was left to mamma’s charge entirely, for this was the
last day, and Lizzie had never climbed a mountain, which she was most
anxious to do, having the common delusion that to climb a mountain is
the easiest thing in the world,--as it looks, from the bottom.
Off she started, saying she should be back again directly, leaving
mamma and the child to watch her from the latest point where there
was a direct path,--the cottage where the old woman had come out and
gone to the burn at sunrise. Behind it was a large boulder, sunshiny
and warm to sit on, sheltered by a hayrick, on the top of which was
gambolling a pussy-cat. Sunny, with her usual love for animals, pursued
it with relentless affection, and at last caught it in her lap,
where it remained about one minute, and then darted away. Sunny wept
bitterly, but was consoled by a glass of milk kindly brought by the old
woman; with which she tried to allure pussy back again, but in vain.
So there was nothing for it but to sit on her mamma’s lap and watch her
Lizzie climbing up the mountain, in sight all the way, but gradually
diminishing to the size of a calf, a sheep, a rabbit; finally of a
black speck, which a sharp eye could distinguish moving about on
the green hillside, creeping from bush to bush, and from boulder to
boulder, till at last it came to the foot of a perpendicular rock.
“She’ll no climb that,” observed the old woman, who had watched the
proceeding with much interest. “Naebody ever does it: she’d better
come down. Cry on her to come down.”
“Will she hear?”
“Oh, yes.”
And in the intense stillness, also from the law of sound ascending, it
was curious how far one could hear. To mamma’s great relief, the black
dot stopped in its progress.
“Lizzie, come down,” she called again, slowly and distinctly, and
in a higher key, aware that musical notes will reach far beyond the
speaking-voice. “You’ve lost the path. Come down!”
“I’m coming,” was the faint answer, and in course of time Lizzie
came, very tired, and just a little frightened. She had begun to
climb cheerfully and rapidly at first, for the hillside looked in the
distance nearly as smooth as an English field. When she got there, she
found it was rather different,--that heather bushes, boulders, mosses,
and bogs were not the pleasantest walking. Then she had to scramble on
all-fours, afraid to look downward, lest her head should turn dizzy,
and she might lose her hold, begin rolling and rolling, and never
stop till she came to the bottom. Still, she went on resolutely, her
stout English heart not liking to be beaten even by a Scotch mountain;
clinging from bush to bush,--at this point a small wood had grown
up,--until she reached a spot where the rock was perpendicular, nay,
overhanging, as it formed the shoulder of the hill.
“I might as well have climbed up the side of a house,” said poor
Lizzie, forlornly; and looked up at it, vexed at being conquered but
evidently thankful that she had got down alive. “Another time,--or if I
have somebody with me,--I do believe I could do it.”
Bravo, Lizzie! Half the doings in the world are done in this spirit.
Never say die! Try again. Better luck next time.
Meanwhile she drank the glass of milk offered by the sympathising old
Highland woman, who evidently approved of the adventurous English girl,
then sat down to rest beside Little Sunny.
But Sunny had no idea of resting. She never has, unless in bed and
asleep. Now she was bent upon also climbing a mountain,--a granite
boulder about three feet high.
“Look, mamma, look at Sunny! Sunny’s going to climb a mountain, like
Lizzie.”
Up she scrambled, with both arms and legs,--catching at the edges of
the boulder, but tumbling back again and again. Still she was not
daunted.
“Don’t help me!--don’t help me!” she kept saying. “Sunny wants to climb
a mountain all by her own self.”
Which feat she accomplished at last, and succeeded in standing upright
on the top of the boulder, very hot, very tired, but triumphant.
“Look, mamma! Look at Sunny! Here she is!”
Mamma looked; in fact had been looking out of the corner of her eye the
whole time, though not assisting at all in the courageous effort.
[Illustration]
“Yes, I see. Sunny has climbed a mountain. Clever little girl! Mamma is
so pleased!”
How many “mountains” will she climb in her life, that brave little
soul! Mamma wonders often, but knows not. Nobody knows.
In the meantime, success was won. She, her mamma, and her Lizzie, had
each “climbed a mountain.” But they all agreed that, though pleasant
enough in its way, such a performance was a thing not to be attempted
every day.