Of afternoons, Sunny and her mamma generally got a little walk and talk alone together along the hillside road, noticing everything, and especially the Highland cattle, who went about in family parties,—the big bull, a splendid animal, black or tawny, looking very fierce, but really offering no harm to anybody; half a dozen cows, and about twice that number of calves. Such funny little things these were! not smooth, like English calves, but with quantities of shaggy hair hanging about them, and especially over their eyes. Papa used to say that his little girl, with her incessant activity, and her yellow curls tossing wildly about on her forehead, was very like a Highland calf.
At first, Sunny was rather afraid of these extraordinary beasts, so different from Southern cattle; but she soon got used to them, and as even the big bull did nothing worse than look at her, and pass her by, she would stand and watch them feeding with great interest, and go as close to them as ever she was allowed. Once she even begged for a little calf to play with, but as it ran away up the mountainside as active as a deer, this was not practicable. And on the whole she liked the ducks and chickens best.
And for a change she liked to walk with mamma around the old-fashioned garden. What a beautiful garden it was!—shut in with high walls, and sloping southward down to the loch. No doubt many a Highland dame, generations back, had taken great pleasure in it, for its fruit-trees were centuries old, and the box edging of its straight, smooth gravel walks was a picture in itself. Also a fuchsia hedge, thick with crimson blossoms, which this little girl, who is passionately fond of flowers, could never pass without begging for “a posie, to stick in my little bosie,” where it was kissed and “loved” until, generally soon enough, it got broken and died.
Equally difficult was it to pass the apples which lay strewn about under the long lines of espaliers, where Maurice and Eddie were often seen hovering about with an apple in each hand, and plenty more in each pocket. The Highland air seemed to give them unlimited digestion, but Sunny’s mamma had occasionally to say to her little girl that quiet denial, which caused a minute’s sobbing, and then, known to be inevitable, was submitted to.
The child found it hard sometimes that little girls might not do all that little boys may. For instance, between the terrace and the pier was a wooden staircase with a hand-rail; both rather old and rickety. About this hand-rail the boys were for ever playing, climbing up it and sliding down it. Sunny wanted to do the same, and one day her mamma caught her perched astride at the top, and preparing to “slidder” down to the bottom, in imitation of Eddie, who was urging her on with all his might. This most dangerous proceeding for little girls with frocks had to be stopped at once; mamma explaining the reason, and insisting that Sunny must promise never to do it again. Poor little woman, she was very sad; but she did promise, and, moreover, she kept her word. Several times mamma saw her stand watching the boys with a mournful countenance, but she never got astride on the hand-rail again. Only once, a sudden consolation occurred to her.
“Mamma, ’posing Sunny were some day to grow into a little boy, then she might slide down the ladder?”
“Certainly, yes!” answered mamma, with great gravity, and equal sincerity. In the meantime she perfectly trusted her reliable child, who never does anything behind her back any more than before her face. And she let her clamber about as much as was practicable, up and down rocks, and over stone dikes, and in and out of burns, since, within certain limitations, little girls should be as active as little boys. And by degrees, Sunny, a strong, healthy, energetic child, began to follow the boys about everywhere.
There was a byre and a hay-house, where the children were very fond of playing, climbing up a ladder and crawling along the roof to the ridge-tiles, along which Eddie would drag himself, astraddle, from end to end, throwing Sunny into an ecstasy of admiration. To climb up to the top of a short ladder and be held there, whence she could watch Eddie crawl like a cat from end to end of the byre, and wait till he slid down the tiles again, was a felicity for which she would even sacrifice the company of “the dear little baby.”
But, after all, the pier was the great resort. From early morning till dark, two or three of the children were always to be seen there, paddling in the shallows like ducks, with or without shoes and stockings, assisting at every embarkation or landing of the elders, and generally, by force of entreaties, getting—Eddie especially—“a low” on their own account several times a day. Even Sunny gradually came to find such fascination in the water, and in Eddie’s company, that if her mamma had not kept a sharp lookout after her, and given strict orders that, without herself, Sunny was never under any pretext to go on the loch at all, the two children, both utterly fearless, would certainly have been discovered sailing away like the wise men of Gotham who “went to sea in a bowl.” Probably with the same ending to their career; that
“If the bowl had been stronger,