Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Nature -- Juvenile fiction; Self-reliance -- Juvenile fiction
Now, although Martin had gone very comfortably to sleep in her arms
and found it sweet to be watched over so tenderly, he was not the
happy little boy he had been before the sight of the distant ocean.
And she knew it, and was troubled in her mind, and anxious to do
something to make him forget that great blue water. She could do many
things, and above all she could show him new and wonderful things in
the hills where she wished to keep him always with her. To caress him,
to feed and watch over him by day, and hold him in her arms when he
slept at night--all that was less to him than the sight of something
new and strange; she knew this well, and therefore determined to
satisfy his desire and make his life so full that he would always be
more than contented with it.
In the morning he went out on the hillside, wandering listlessly
among the rocks, and when the big cat found him there and tried to
tempt him to a game he refused to play, for he had not yet got over
his disappointment, and could think of nothing but the sea. But the
cat did not know that anything was the matter with him, and was more
determined to play than ever; crouching now here, now there among
the stones and bushes, he would spring out upon Martin and pull him
down with its big paws, and this so enraged him that picking up a
stick he struck furiously at his tormentor. But the cat was too
quick for him; he dodged the blows, then knocked the stick out of
his hand, and finally Martin, to escape from him, crept into a
crevice in a rock where the cat could not reach him, and refused to
come out even when the Lady of the Hills came to look for him and
begged him to come to her. When at last, compelled by hunger, he
returned to her, he was silent and sullen and would not be caressed.
He saw no more of the cat, and when next day he asked her where it
was, she said that it had gone from them and would return no
more--that she had sent it away because it had vexed him. This made
Martin sulk, and he would have gone away and hidden himself from her
had she not caught him up in her arms. He struggled to free himself,
but could not, and she then carried him away a long distance down
the mountain-side until they came to a small dell, green with
creepers and bushes, with a deep carpet of dry moss on the ground,
and here she sat down and began to talk to him.
"The cat was a very beautiful beast with his spotted hide," she said;
"and you liked to play with him sometimes, but in a little while you
will be glad that he has gone from you."
He asked her why.
"Because though he was fond of you and liked to follow you about and
play with you, he is very fierce and powerful, and all the other
beasts are afraid of him. So long as he was with us they would not
come, but now he has gone they will come to you and let you go to
them."
"Where are they?" said Martin, his curiosity greatly excited.
"Let us wait here," she said, "and perhaps we shall see one by-and-by."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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