The morning had opened rather desolately. With the dawn the slate-grey fingers of the rain clouds had reached down, spanning from Criffel to Screel. The sea mist did what faith also can do. It removed mountains. One after another they faded and were not. A chillish wind began to blow up from the Solway, and even in Eden Valley was heard the distant roar of the surf, through the low pass which is called the Nick of Benarick. The long grass first stood in beads and then began to trickle. Flowers drooped their heads if of the harebell sort, or stood spikily defiant like the yellow whin and the pink thistle. I had got ready cloaks and hoods, you may be sure. I was on the spot at my grandmother's door a full hour before the time. Within I found Mary Lyon raging. Neither of the bairns should go out of her house on such a day! What for could they not be content to take their learning from Duncan and Agnes Anne? Miss Irma, she was sure, was well able to teach the bairn. It was all a foolishness, and very likely would end in something uncanny. If it did--well, let nobody blame her. She had lifted up her testimony, and thrown away her wisdom on deaf ears. Which, indeed, was something not unlike the case. For just then the sun shone out. The clouds divided to right and left, following the steep purpling ridges on either side of Eden Valley--and in the middle opening out a long sweet stream of brightness. Little Louis clapped his hands. He ached for the company of his kind. He talked "boys." He dreamed "boys"--not grown-up boys like me, but children of his own age. He despised Irma because she was a girl. Only Agnes Anne could anyways satisfy him, when she put on over her dress a pair of her grandfather's corduroy trousers, buttoned them above her shoulder, and pretended to give orders as in the pirn-mill. Even then, after a happy hour with the toys which Agnes Anne contrived for him, all at once Louis grew whimpering disappointedly, stared at her and said, "You are not a real little boy." And I, who had the pick of the Eden Valley boys on my hand every time I went near my father's (and knew them for little beasts), wondered at his taste, when he could have Irma's company, not to speak of Agnes Anne's. But I resolved that I should keep a bright look-out and make the little villains behave. For at an early age our Eden Valley boys were just savages, ready to mock and rend any one of themselves who was a little better dressed, who wore boots instead of clogs with birch-wood soles, or dared to speak without battering the King's English out of all recognition.