How many “mountains” will she climb in her life, that brave little soul! Mamma wonders often, but knows not. Nobody knows.
In the meantime, success was won. She, her mamma, and her Lizzie, had each “climbed a mountain.” But they all agreed that, though pleasant enough in its way, such a performance was a thing not to be attempted every day.
CHAPTER XI.
The last day came,—the last hour. Sunny, her mamma, and her Lizzie, had to turn their ways homeward,—a long, long journey of several hundred miles. To begin it at four in the morning, with a child, too, was decided as impracticable; so it was arranged that they should leave overnight, and sleep at the only available place, an inn which English superiority scornfully termed a “public-house,” but which here in the Highlands was called the “hotel,” where “gentlemen could be accommodated with excellent shooting quarters.” Therefore, it was supposed to be able to accommodate a lady and a child,—for one night, at least.
Fortunately, the shooting gentlemen did not avail themselves of it; for the hotel contained only two guest-rooms. These being engaged, and the exact time of the boat next morning learned,—which was not so easy, as everybody in the neighbourhood gave different advice and a different opinion,—the departure was settled.
Lovelier than ever looked the hills and the loch when the carriage came around to the door. All the little boys crowded around it, with vociferous farewell,—which they evidently thought great fun,—Sunny likewise.
“Good-bye! good-bye!” cried she, as cheerfully as if it had been “how d’ye do,” and obstinately refused to be kissed by anybody. Indeed, this little girl does not like kisses, unless she offers them of her own accord.
One only grief she had, but that was a sharp one. Maurice’s papa, who had her in his arms, suddenly proposed that they should “send mamma away and keep Sunny;” and the scream of agony she gave, and the frantic way she clung to her mamma, and would not look at anybody for fear of being kept prisoner, was quite pathetic.
At last the good-byes were over. For Little Sunshine these are as yet meaningless; life to her is a series of delights,—the new ones coming as the old ones go. The felicity of kissing her hand and driving away was soon followed by the amusement of standing on her mamma’s lap, where she could see everything along the road, which she had passed a fortnight before in dark night.
Now it was golden twilight,—such a twilight! A year or two hence Sunny would have been in ecstasy at the mountains, standing range behind range, literally transfigured in light, with the young moon floating like a “silver boat” (only turned the wrong way uppermost) over their tops. As it was, the large, distant world interested her less than the small, near one,—the trees that swept her face as she drove along the narrow road, and the numerous cows and calves that fed on either side of it.