Which was more than the household did. For, as was natural, the cook being dressed so beautifully, the dinner was left pretty much to dress itself. Franky and Austin Thomas suffered so much from having on their best clothes that they did not get over it for ever so long. And Sunny, too, upset by these irregular proceedings, when taking a long-promised afternoon walk with her papa, was as cross as such a generally good little girl could be, insisting on being carried the whole way, and carried only by her mamma. And though, as mamma often says, “she wouldn’t sell her for her weight in gold,” she is a pretty considerable weight to carry on a warm afternoon.
Still the day had passed pleasantly away, the photographs were all done, to remain as memorials of the holiday, long after it was ended. In years to come, when the children are all men and women, they may discover them in some nook or other, and try to summon up faint recollections of the time. Oh, if Little Sunshine might never cry except to be carried in mamma’s arms! and Austin Thomas find no sorer affliction in life than sitting to be photographed in stiff white clothes!
But that cannot be. They must all bear their burdens, as their parents did. May God take care of them when we can do it no more!
The week had rolled by,—weeks roll by so fast!—and it was again Sunday, the last Sunday at the glen, and just such another as before: calm, still, sunshiny; nothing but peace on earth and sky. Peace! when far away beyond the circle of mountains within which parents and children were enjoying such innocent pleasures, such deep repose, there was going on, for other parents and children, the terrible siege of Paris. Week by week, and day by day, the Germans were closing in round the doomed city, making ready to destroy by fire, or sword, or famine,—all sent by man’s hand, not God’s,—hundreds, thousands of innocent enemies. Truly, heaven will have been well filled, and earth well emptied during the year 1870.
What a glorious summer it was, as to weather, will long be remembered in Scotland. Even up to this Sunday, the 2d of October, the air was balmy and warm as June. Everybody gathered outside on the terrace, including the forlorn salmon-fishers, whose last hope was now extinguished; for the patient gentleman, and Sunny’s papa, too, were to leave next morning. And the fish jumped up in the glassy loch, livelier than ever, as if they were having a special jubilee in honour of their foe’s departure.
He sat resigned and cheerful, smoking his cigar, and protesting that, with all his piscatory disappointments, this was the loveliest place he had ever been in, and that he had spent the pleasantest of holidays! There he was left to enjoy his last bit of the mountains and loch in quiet content, while everybody else went to church.
Even Little Sunshine. For her mamma and papa had taken counsel together whether it was not possible for her to be good there, so as at least to be no hindrance to other people’s going, which was as much as could be expected for so small a child. Papa doubted this, but mamma pleaded for her little girl, and promised to keep her good if possible. She herself had a great desire that the first time ever Sunny went to church should be in this place.
So they had a talk together, mamma and Sunny, in which mamma explained that Sunny might go to church, as Maurice and Eddie did, if she would sit quite quiet, as she did at prayers, and promise not to speak one word, as nobody ever spoke in church excepting the minister. She promised, this little girl who has such a curious feeling about keeping a promise, and allowed herself to be dressed without murmuring—nay, with a sort of dignified pride—to “go to church.” She even condescended to have her gloves put on, always a severe trial; and never was there a neater little figure, all in white from top to toe, with a white straw hat, as simple as possible, and the yellow curls tumbling down from under it. As she put her little hand in her mamma’s and they two started together, somewhat in advance of the rest, for it was a long half-mile for such baby feet, her mamma involuntarily thought of a verse in a poem she learnt when she herself was a little girl:
“Thy dress was like the lilies,
And thy heart was pure as they;