Our Little Scotch Cousin

by Blanche McManus

The doctor's effort to be stern did not last long, for Donald nearly choked him with a big hug, and then subsided panting beside Sandy. Whenever Sandy was very much pleased he grew speechless and shy, but he nudged Don with his elbow and grinned, so every one knew he was as delighted as the more talkative Don.

"But that is not all the news," said Mrs. Gordon. "Your cousins are coming to make us a visit first, and your Uncle Alan says we may look for them next week."

"Hurrah! won't we have fun going about seeing things," and Don started another dance, for he was very fond of his two little cousins, Janet and Marjorie Lindsay, and thought them far nicer than most lassies, for they could keep up with him on a day's climb over the moors, and play games almost as well as Sandy.

The boys were soon whispering together in a corner, and planning how much pleasure they could crowd into this wonderful week. Don told for the hundredth time of the marvels of Skylemore, his Uncle Alan's beautiful home in the Highlands.

Uncle Alan Lindsay was a very wonderful person to Donald. He had gone to America when he was a young lad, and had made a great fortune in copper mines. He wanted to enjoy it in Scotland, his own country, however, for the Scotch are very clannish, and like nothing better than to be in their own land, and among their own people.

So he came back to Scotland, and bought a fine estate with a beautiful house, into which he put handsome furniture and good pictures and books,—everything that could make a home attractive. To Donald it seemed a palace, and he did not think the king himself had anything so grand.

Around the house was a big park, with miles of rolling woodland well stocked with deer. Here one could shoot grouse and pheasants and small game of all kinds. There were several clear streams and a loch, as a lake is called in Scotland, where one could fish for salmon and trout, and catch them, too, if one only knew how.

Many were the stories that Don had told Sandy of his adventures in company with old Dugald, the gamekeeper, who had taught him how to fish; and how together they had tramped miles over the wild moors covered with heather.

Donald never tired of hearing his uncle tell of his life and adventures in the far-away Western States of America, which seemed always to him to belong to another world. The story of how he had lived among real Indians, and had been lost in great snow-storms, was like a recounting of adventures of the olden time to the lad.

Donald was amazed, too, at the tales of the great cities that his uncle had seen in America, with big buildings so tall that they seemed like many houses piled one on top of another. Then again there were miles and miles of nothing but great wheat-fields. "Why, you could drop Scotland down in the midst of them and it would be so small that you would not be able to find it again if it were not for the mountains sticking up above the grain," Uncle Alan would say, with a twinkle in his eye. But he would always add: "It's a grand country, bonnie Scotland, if it is a wee one, my lad."