Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and SeaStables, Gordon
General
Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea
Stables, Gordon
Fiction
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 shine.
"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-fashioned 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-shilling 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,--
"There is something else. Look at your tablets, Miss Gale."
"Oh yes," said Miss Gale. "Here it is--Flute."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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