“Wouldn’t you like to catch a big salmon?” she asked Nelly, not recognising in the least that she was parting with her, probably never to meet again in all their lives. But the elder child looked sad and grave during the whole of that day. And when for the last time Nelly put her arms around Sunny and kissed her over and over again, Sunny being of course just as merry as ever, and quite unconscious that they were bidding one another good-bye, it was rather hard for poor little Nelly.
However, the child did not forget her kind companion. For weeks and even months afterwards, upon hearing the least allusion to this place, Sunshine would wake up into sudden remembrance. “Where’s Nelly? I want to see Nelly,—I want Nelly to come and play with me;” and look quite disappointed when told that Nelly was far away, and couldn’t come. Which was, perhaps, as much as could be expected of three years old.
Always happy in the present, and frightened at nothing so long as she was “close by mamma,” Little Sunshine took her next journey. On the way she stayed a night at the seaside place where she had been taken before, and this time the weather was kind. She wandered with her Lizzie on the beach, and watched the waves for a long time; then she went indoors to play with some other little children, and to pay a visit to the dear old lady who had been ill, when she was here last. Here, I am afraid, she did not behave quite as well as she ought to have done,—being tired and sleepy; nor did she half enough value the kind little presents she got; but she will some day, and understand the difference between eighty years of age and three, and how precious to a little child is the blessing of an old woman.
Sunny went to bed rather weary and forlorn, but she woke up, next morning, and ran in to papa and mamma, still in her nightgown, with her little bare feet pattering along the floor, looking as bright as the sunshine itself. Which was very bright that day,—a great comfort, as there was a ten hours’ sea-voyage before the little woman, who had never been on board a steamboat, and never travelled so long at a time in all her life. She made a good breakfast to start with, sitting at table with a lot of grown-up people whose faces were as blithe as her own, and behaving very well, considering. Then came another good-bye, of course unheeded by Little Sunshine, and she was away on her travels once more.
But what happened to her next must be put into a new chapter.
CHAPTER V.
The pier Sunny started from was one near the mouth of a large estuary or firth, where a great many ships of all sorts are constantly coming and going. Sometimes the firth is very stormy, as on the first day when she was there, but to-day it was smooth as glass. The mountains around it looked half asleep in a sunshiny haze, and upon the river itself was not a single ripple. The steamers glided up and down in the distance as quietly as swans upon a lake. You could just catch the faint click-clack of their paddle-wheels, and see the long trail of smoke following after them, till it melted into nothing.
“Where’s Sunny’s steamboat? Sunny is going to sail in a steamboat,” chattered the little girl; who catches up everything, sometimes even the longest words and the queerest phrases, nobody knows how.
Sunny’s steamboat lay alongside the pier. Its engines were puffing and its funnel smoking; and when she came to the gangway she looked rather frightened, and whispered, “Mamma, take her,” holding out those pathetic little arms.