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 mountainside 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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