My song would have been longer!”
After Little Sunshine’s holiday was done, mamma, thinking over the countless risks run, by her own child and these other children, felt thankful that they had all left this beautiful glen alive.
CHAPTER VIII.
The days sped so fast with these happy people, children and “grown-ups,” as Sunny calls them, that soon it was already Sunday, the first of the only two Sundays they had to spend at the glen. Shall I tell about them both?
These parents considered Sunday the best day in all the week, and tried to make it so; especially to the children, whom, in order to give the servants rest, they then took principally into their own hands. They wished that, when the little folks grew up, Sunday should always be remembered as a bright day, a cheerful day, a day spent with papa and mamma; when nobody had any work to do, and everybody was merry, and happy, and good. Also clean, which was a novelty here. Even the elders rather enjoyed putting on their best clothes with the certainty of not getting them wetted in fishing-boats, or torn with briers and brambles on hillsides. Church was not till twelve at noon, so most of the party went a leisurely morning stroll, and Sunny’s papa and mamma decided to have a quiet row on the loch, in a clean boat, all by their two selves. But, as it happened, their little girl, taking a walk with her Lizzie, espied them afar off.
Faintly across the water came the pitiful entreaty, “Papa! mamma! Take her. Take her with you.” And the little figure, running as fast as her fat legs would carry her, was seen making its way, with Lizzie running after, to the very edge of the loch.
What heart would not have relented? Papa rowed back as fast as he could, and took her in, her face quivering with delight, though the big tears were still rolling down her cheeks. But April showers do not dry up faster than Sunny’s tears.
No fishing to-day, of course. Peacefully they floated down the loch, which seemed to know it was Sunday, and to lie, with the hills standing around it, more restful, more sunshiny, more beautiful than ever. Not a creature was stirring; even the cattle, that always clustered on a little knoll above the canal, made motionless pictures of themselves against the sky, as if they were sitting or standing for their portraits, and would not move upon any account. Now and then, as the boat passed, a bird in the bushes fluttered, but not very far off, and then sat on a bough and looked at it, too fearless of harm to fly away. Everything was so intensely still, so unspeakably beautiful, that when mamma, sitting in the stern, with her arm fast around her child, began to sing “Jerusalem the Golden,” and afterward that other beautiful hymn, “There is a land of pure delight,” the scene around appeared like an earthly picture of that Celestial Land.
They rowed homeward just in time to dress for church, and start, leaving the little girl behind. She was to follow, by and by, with her Lizzie, and be taken charge of by mamma while Lizzie went to the English service in the afternoon.
This was the morning service, and in Gaelic. With an English prayer-book it was just possible to follow it and guess at it, though the words were unintelligible. But they sounded very sweet, and so did the hymns; and the small congregation listened as gravely and reverently as if it had been the grandest church in the world, instead of a tiny room, no bigger than an ordinary sitting-room, with a communion-table of plain deal, and a few rows of deal benches, enough to seat about twenty people, there being about fifteen present to-day. Some of them had walked several miles, as they did every Sunday, and often, their good clergyman said, when the glen was knee-deep in snow.