Little Sunshine's holiday

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Of course this was not right, and, as I said before, the little girl is not a perfect little girl. She is naughty at times, like all of us. Still, mamma was rather sorry for her. It was difficult for an only child, accustomed to have her mamma all to herself, to tumble suddenly into such a crowd of boys, and see that mamma could be kind to and fond of other children besides her own, as all mothers ought to be, without taking away one atom from the special mother’s love, which no little people need be jealous over. Sunny bore the trial pretty well, on the whole. She did not actually cry,—but she kept fast hold of her mamma’s gown, and watched her with anxious eyes whenever she spoke to any other child, and especially to Austin Thomas.

The boys were very kind to her. Maurice went and took hold of her hand, trying to talk to her in his gentle way; his manners were as sweet as his face. Eddie, who was stronger and rougher, and more boyish, wanted her to go down with him to the pier,—a small erection of stones at the shallow edge of the loch, where two or three boats always lay moored. Consequently the boys kept tumbling in and out of them,—and in and out of the water, too, very often,—all day long. But the worst they ever could get was a good wetting,—except Austin Thomas, who one day toddled in and slipped down, and, being very fat, could not pull himself up again; so that, shallow as the water was, he was very near being drowned. But Maurice and Eddie were almost “water babies,”—so thoroughly at home in the loch,—and Eddie, though under six years old, could already handle an oar.

“I can low” (row,—he could not speak plain yet). “I once lowed grandpapa all across the loch. Shall I low you and the little girl?”

But mamma rather hesitated at accepting the kind offer, and compromised the matter by going down to the pier with Sunny in her arms, to watch Eddie “low,”—about three yards out and back again,—in a carefully moored boat. Sunny immediately wanted to go too, and mamma promised her she should, after breakfast, when papa was there to take care of her.

So the little party went back to the raised terrace in front of the house, where the sun was shining so bright, and where Phil, who was in delicate health, stood looking on with his pale, quiet face,—sadly quiet and grave for such a child,—and Franky, who was reserved and shy, stopped a moment in his solitary playing to notice the newcomer, but did not offer to go near her. Austin Thomas, however, kept pulling at her with his stout, chubby arms, but whether he meant caressing or punching it was difficult to say. Sunny opposed a dignified resistance, and would not look at Austin Thomas at all.

“Mamma, I want to stop with you. May Sunny stop with you?” implored she. “You said Sunny should go in the boat with you.”

Mamma always does what she says, if she possibly can, and, besides, she felt a sympathy for her lonely child, who had not been much used to play with other children. So she kept Sunny beside her till they went down together—papa too—for their first row on the loch.

Such a splendid day! Warm but fresh—how could it help being fresh in that pure mountain air, which turned Sunny’s cheeks the colour of opening rosebuds, and made even papa and mamma feel almost as young as she? Big people like holidays as well as little people, and it was long since they had had a holiday. This was the very perfection of one, when everybody did exactly as they liked; which consisted chiefly in doing nothing from morning till night.

Sunny was the only person who objected to idleness. She must always be doing something.

“I want to catch fishes,” said she, after having sat quiet by mamma’s side in the stern of the boat for about three minutes and a half: certainly not longer, though it was the first time she had ever been in a boat in all her life, and the novelty of her position sufficed to sober her for just that length of time. “I want to catch big salmon all by my own self.”