Little Sunshine's holiday

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

The place they were going to was quite different from that they had left. It was only lodgings,—in a house on the top of a hill,—but they were nice lodgings, and it was a bright breezy hill, sloping down to a beautiful glen, through which ran an equally beautiful stream. Thence, the country sloped up again, through woods and pasture-lands, to a dim range of mountains, far in the horizon. A very pretty place outside, and not bad inside, only the little girl’s “nursery” was not so large and cheerful as the one she was used to, and she missed the full house and the merry companions. However, being told that papa was coming to-morrow, she brightened up, and informed everybody, whether interested or not in the fact, that “Sunny was going to see papa jump out of a puff-puff, to-morrow.” “To-morrow” being still to her a very indefinite thing; but “papa jumping out of a puff-puff” has long been one of the great features of her existence.

Still, to-day she would have been rather dull, if, when she went out into the garden, there had not come timidly forward, to look at her, a little girl, whose name mamma inquired, and found that it was Nelly.

Nellie and Sunny on the steps.

Here a word or two ought to be said about Nelly, for she turned out the greatest comfort to solitary little Sunny, in this strange place. Nelly was not exactly “a young lady;” indeed, at first she hung back in a sweet, shy way, as doubtful whether Sunny’s mamma would allow the child to play with her. But Nelly was such a good little girl, so well brought-up, and sensible, though only ten years old, that a princess might have had her for a playfellow without any disadvantage. And as soon as mamma felt sure that Sunny would learn nothing bad from her,—which is the only real objection to playfellows,—she allowed the children to be together as much as ever they liked.

Nelly called Sunshine “a bonnie wee lassie,”—words which, not understanding what they meant, had already offended her several times since she came to Scotland.

“I’m not a bonnie wee lassie,—I’m Sunny; mamma’s little Sunny, I am!” cried she, almost in tears. But this was the only annoyance that Nelly ever gave her.

Very soon the two children were sitting together in a most charming play-place,—some tumble-down, moss-grown stone steps leading down to the garden. From thence you could see the country for miles, and watch the railway trains winding along like big serpents, with long feathers of steam and smoke streaming from their heads in the daylight, and great red fiery eyes gleaming through the dark.

Nelly had several stories to tell about them: how once a train caught fire, and blazed up,—they saw the blaze from these steps,—and very dreadful it was to look at; also, she wanted to know if Sunny had seen the river below; such a beautiful little river, only sometimes people were drowned in it,—two young ladies who were bathing, and also a schoolmaster, who had fallen into a deep hole, which was now called the Dominie’s Hole.

Nelly spoke broad Scotch, but her words were well chosen, and her manner very simple and gentle and sweet. She had evidently been carefully educated, as almost all Scotch children are. She went to school, she said, every morning, so that she could only play with Sunny of afternoons; but to-morrow afternoon, if the lady allowed,—there was still that pretty, polite hesitation at anything that looked like intrusiveness,—she would take Sunny and her Lizzie a walk, and show them all that was to be seen.