Little Sunshine's holiday

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Sunshine says good-bye to the gardener & his wife.

The packing-up was such a great amusement—to herself, at least—that it was with difficulty she could be torn from it, even to get her dinner, and be dressed for her journey, part of which was to take place that day. At last she was got ready, a good while before anybody else, and then she stood and looked at herself from head to foot in a large mirror, and was very much interested in the sight. Her travelling-dress was a gray waterproof cloak, with a hood and pockets, where she could carry all sorts of things,—her gloves, a biscuit, the head of her dolly (its body had come off), and two or three pebbles, which she daily picked up in the garden, and kept to wash in her bath night and morning, “to make them clean,” for she has an extraordinary delight in things being “quite clean.” She had on a pair of new boots,—buttoned boots, the first she ever had,—and she was exceedingly proud of them, as well as of her gray felt hat, underneath which was the usual mass of curly yellow hair. She shook it from side to side like a little lion’s mane, calling out, “Mamma, look at Sunny’s curls! Such a lot of curls!”

When the carriage came to the door, she watched the luggage being put in very gravely. Then all the servants came to say good-bye to her. They were very kind servants, and very fond of Little Sunshine. Even the gardener and his wife looked quite sorry to part with her, but in her excitement and delight the little lady of course did not mind it at all.

“Good-bye! good-bye! I’m going to Scotland,” she kept saying, and kissing her hand. “Sunny’s going to Scotland in a puff-puff. But she’ll come back again, she will.”

After which kind promise, meant to cheer them up a little, she insisted on jumping into the carriage “all by her own self,”—she dearly likes doing anything “all my own self,”—and, kissing her hand once more, was driven away with her mamma and her nurse (whose name is Lizzie) to meet her papa in London.

Having been several times in a “puff-puff,” and once in London, she was not a bit frightened at the streets or the crowd. Only in the confusion at Euston Square she held very tight to her mamma’s hand, and at last whispered, “Mamma, take her! up in you arms, up in you own arms!”—her phrase when she was almost a baby. And though she is now a big girl, who can walk, and even run, she clung tightly to her mamma’s neck, and would not be set down again until transferred to her papa, and taken by him to look at the engine.

Papa and his little girl are both very fond of engines. This was such a large one, newly painted, with its metal-work so clean and shiny, that it was quite a picture. Though sometimes it gave a snort and a puff like a live creature, Sunny was not afraid of it, but sat in her papa’s arms watching it, and then walked gravely up and down with him, holding his hand and making all sorts of remarks on the things she saw, which amused him exceedingly. She also informed him of what she was going to do,—how she should jump into the puff-puff, and then jump out again, and sleep in a cottage, in a quite new bed, where Sunny had never slept before. She chattered so fast, and was so delighted at everything about her, that the time went rapidly by; and her papa, who could not come to Scotland for a week yet, was obliged to leave her. When he kissed her, poor Little Sunshine set up a great cry.

“I don’t want you to go away. Papa! papa!” Then, bursting into one of her pathetic little furies, “I won’t let papa go away! I won’t!”

She clung to him so desperately that her little arms had fairly to be untied from round his neck, and it was at least two minutes and a half before she could be comforted.

But when the train began to move, and the carriageful of people to settle down for the journey, Sunny recovered herself, and grew interested in watching them. They were all gentlemen, and as each came in, mamma had suggested that if he objected to a child, he had better choose another carriage; but nobody did. One—who looked like the father of a family—said: “Ma’am, he must be a very selfish kind of man who does object to children,—that is, good children.” So mamma earnestly hoped that hers would be a good child.