Presently the baa-lambs were forgotten in a new sight,—a stream; a real, flowing, tumbling stream,—which ran alongside of the railway for ever so far. It jumped over rocks, and made itself into white foamy whirlpools; it looked so very much alive, and so unlike any water that Sunny had ever seen before, that she was quite astonished.
“What’s that? What’s that?” she kept saying; and at last, struck with a sudden idea, “Is it Scotland?”
What her notion of Scotland was,—whether a place, or a person, or a thing,—her mamma could not make out, but the name was firmly fixed in her mind, and she recurred to it constantly. All the long, weary journey, lasting till long after her proper bedtime, she never cried or fretted, or worried anybody, but amused herself without ceasing at what she saw. She ate her dinner merrily—“such a funny dinner,—no plates, no forks, no table-cloth”—and her tea,—milk drank out of a horn cup, instead of “great-grandpapa’s mug, which he had when he was a little boy,”—which she used when at home.
As the day closed in, she grew tired of looking out of the window, snuggled up in her mamma’s arms, and, turning her back upon the people in the carriage, whispered, blushing very much: “Maymie’s apron—Sunny wants the little Maymie’s apron;” and lay sucking it meditatively, till she dropped asleep.
She was asleep when the train reached Scotland. She did not see the stars coming out over the Grampian Hills, nor the beautiful fires near Gartsherrie—that ring of iron furnaces, blazing fiercely into the night—which are such a wonderful sight to behold. And she only woke up in time to have her hat and cloak put on, and be told that she was really in Scotland, and would see her aunties in a minute more. And, sure enough, in the midst of the bustle and confusion, there was Auntie Weirie’s bright face at the carriage-door, with her arms stretched out to receive the sleepy little traveller.
Four or five miles were yet to be accomplished, but it was in a comfortable carriage, dark and quiet.
The little girl’s tongue was altogether silent,—but she was not asleep, for all of a sudden she burst out, as if she had been thinking over the matter for a long time, “Mamma, you forgot the tickets.”
Everybody laughed; and mamma explained to her most accurate little daughter that she had given up the tickets while Sunny was asleep. Auntie Weirie forboded merrily how Sunny would “keep mamma in order” by and by.
Very sleepy and tired the poor child was; but, except one entreaty for “a little drop of milk,”—which somehow was got at,—she made no complaint, and never once cried until the carriage stopped at the house-door.
Oh, such a door and such a house! Quite a fairy palace! And there, standing waiting, was a pretty lady,—not unlike a fairy lady,—who took Little Sunshine in her arms and carried her off, unresisting, to a beautiful drawing-room, where, in the great tall mirrors, she could see herself everywhere at full length.