Part 13 (2/2)
As they walked on over the hills, Kenneth by golden-haired Jessie's side, the sky above them blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath, Kenneth got his child-companion to talk and tell him more about the great world, that mighty ocean of life that lay in the far beyond, the ceaseless throb of whose billows was hardly ever heard among those peaceful hills.
The boy stopped and looked backwards and away out towards the sea.
Probably he never looked half so handsome as he did now, with his heart filled with manly resolves, with the light of a half-kindled ambition making his face to s.h.i.+ne.
”I'm very, very happy here, Miss Jessie,” he said. ”I may never, never be so happy as I am now, as I have been to-day. But before long I mean to leave this country, leave Scotland, and go away into the world, Miss Jessie.”
The child looked at him half afraid.
”Yes, I'm foolish, I suppose, but I cannot help it; go I must. I daresay I have read too many books, but--I long to go.
”I'm going to take Nancy's Bible with me,” he said, smiling and looking half ashamed. ”I'll never part with that.”
”Let me see it,” said Jessie.
He took from his bosom a little old-fas.h.i.+oned Bible, with the Psalms of David--those heavenly gems of poetry and song--in metre at the end of the book, and placed it in the child's hand.
”You are a very good boy,” she said, for the child felt she must say something.
”But oh!” she added, ”here is a pressed primrose in the book.”
”It is one of those you gathered for me; don't you remember?”
”Oh! yes,” she replied, smiling, ”but it looks so lonely; here, place this little tiny bit of heather beside it.”
It was an innocent child-like action to place the bit of heather bloom there with the primrose, but one that Kenneth never forgot.
Archie was indeed a proud boy when Jessie and Miss Gale fell into raptures over the cave. Everything was admired, the heather seats, the rustic sofa, the rude bookcase containing the authors the boys read almost every day, and even the carpet of brackens.
”Did you get them?” said Kenneth in a stage whisper to Archie.
”Yes,” replied Archie, with eyes as big as two-s.h.i.+lling pieces, ”and such a fine lot they are. And the cream. Yes, and plates and spoons and all.”
To the astonishment of his guests, Kenneth now placed a table in the centre of the cave, and bade them all sit down. Then from a dark recess he excavated a huge dish of mountain strawberries [Rubus chamaemorus], a jar of cream, and plates and spoons. Neither Jessie nor Miss Gale had ever eaten anything so delicious before.
”But what are they, Kenneth?” she said.
”They are called cloud-berries,” replied Kenneth; ”they only grow far up in the mountain tops, and some call them fairy food. People about here say that these berries creep in under their leaves, and hide when any one with a baneful eye looks at them, and that only good people can gather them.”
”And who gathered these?” said Miss Gale.
”Archie.”
”Oh! Archie, you are good.”
Archie felt prouder even than before.
But after the cloud-berries were discussed, wee Jessie, sitting there on her heather couch, said, with a half-arch smile,--
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