Little Sunshine's holiday

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

As Little Sunshine stood there, unconsciously moving her baby lips to the pretty tune,—ignorant of all the words and their meaning,—her mother, not ignorant, took the tiny soft hand in hers and said for her in her heart, “Amen.”

When the hymn was done, the congregation passed slowly out of church, most of them stopping to speak or shake hands, for of course all knew one another, and several were neighbours and friends. Then at last Sunny’s papa ventured to take up his little girl, and kiss her, telling her what a very good little girl she had been, and how pleased he was to see it. The minister, walking home between Maurice and Eddie, who seized upon him at once, turned round to say that he had never known a little girl, taken to church for the first time, behave so remarkably well. And though she was too young to understand anything except that she had been a good girl, and everybody loved her and was pleased with her, still Sunny also looked pleased, as if satisfied that church-going was a sweet and pleasant thing.

CHAPTER X.

Little Sunshine’s delicious holiday—equally delicious to her papa and mamma, too—was now fast drawing to a close. This Sunday sunset, more gorgeous perhaps than ever, was the last that the assembled party of big and little people watched together from the terrace. By the next Sunday, they knew, all of them would be scattered far and wide, in all human probability never again to meet, as a collective party, in this world. For some of them had come from the “under world,” the Antipodes, and were going back thither in a few months, and all had their homes and fortunes widely dispersed, so as to make their chances of future reunion small.

They were sorry to part, I think,—even those who were nearly strangers to one another,—and those who were friends were very sorry indeed. The children, of course, were not sorry at all, for they understood nothing about the matter. For instance, it did not occur in the least to Sunny or to Austin Thomas (still viewing one another with suspicious eyes, and always on the brink of war, though Sunny kept her promise, and did not attack again), that the next time they met might be as big boy and girl, learning lessons, and not at all disposed to fight; or else as grown young man and woman, obliged to be polite to one another whether they liked it or not.

But the elders were rather grave, and watched the sun set, or rather not the sun,—for he was always invisible early in the afternoon, the house being placed on the eastern slope of the hill,—but the sunset glow on the range of mountains opposite. Which, as the light gradually receded upward, the shadow pursuing, had been, evening after evening, the loveliest sight imaginable. This night especially, the hills seemed to turn all colours, fading at last into a soft gray, but keeping their outlines distinct long after the loch and valley were left dark.

So, good-bye, sun! When he rose again, two of the party would be on board a steamboat,—the steamboat, for there was but one,—sailing away southward, where there were no hills, no lochs, no salmon-fishing, no idle, sunshiny days,—nothing but work, work, work. For “grown-ups,” as Sunny calls them, do really work; though, as a little girl once observed pathetically to Sunny’s mamma, “Oh, I wish I was grown up, and then I might be idle! We children have to work so hard! while you and my mamma do nothing all day long.” (Oh, dear!)

Well, work is good, and pleasant too; though perhaps Sunny’s papa did not exactly think so, when he gave her her good-night kiss, which was also good-bye. For he was to start so early in the morning that it was almost the middle of the night, in order to catch the steamer which should touch at the pier ten miles off, between six and seven A. M. Consequently, there was breakfast by candle-light, and hasty adieux, and a dreary departure of the carriage under the misty morning starlight; everybody making an effort to be jolly, and not quite accomplishing it. Then everybody, or as many as had had courage to rise, went to bed again, and tried to sleep, with varied success, Sunny’s mamma with none at all.

It recurred to her, as a curious coincidence, that this very day, twenty-five years before, after sitting up all night, she had watched, solemnly as one never does it twice in a lifetime, a glorious sunrise. She thought she would go out and watch another, from the hillside, over the mountains.

My children, did you ever watch a sunrise? No? Then go and do it as soon as ever you can. Not lazily from your bedroom window, but out in the open air, where you seem to hear and see the earth gradually waking up, as she does morning after morning, each waking as wonderful and beautiful as if she had not done the same for thousands of years, and may do it for thousands more.