And Paul has taken the pen, too, and in his extraordinary effort to make a big P, has made a very big blot. And Jamie writes under it—“This is Paul’s work, pa; but he says it’s a love blot, only he loves you ten hundred times more.”
And after your return Jamie will insist that you should go with him to the brook, and sit down with him upon a tuft of the brake, to fling off a line into the eddies, though only the nibbling roach are sporting below. You have instructed the workmen to spare the clumps of bank-willows, that the wood-duck may have a covert in winter, and that the Bob-o’-Lincolns may have a quiet nesting place in the spring.
Sometimes your wife—too kind to deny such favor—will stroll with you along the meadow banks, and you pick meadow daisies in memory of the old time. Little Carry weaves them into rude chaplets, to dress the forehead of Paul, and they dance along the greensward, and switch off the daffodils, and blow away the dandelion seeds, to see if their wishes are to come true. Jamie holds a buttercup under Carry’s chin, to find if she loves gold; and Paul, the rogue, teases them by sticking a thistle into sister’s curls.
The pony has hard work to do under Carry’s swift riding—but he is fed by her own hand, with the cold breakfast rolls. The nuts are gathered in time, and stored for long winter evenings, when the fire is burning bright and cheerily—a true, hickory blaze—which sends its waving gleams over eager, smiling faces, and over well-stored book shelves, and portraits of dear, lost ones. While from time to time, that wife, who is the soul of the scene, will break upon the children’s prattle, with the silver melody of her voice, running softly and sweetly through the couplets of Crabbe’s stories, or the witchery of the Flodden tale.
Then the boys will guess conundrums, and play at fox and geese; and Tray, cherished in his age, and old Milo petted in his dotage, lie side by side upon the lion’s skin before the blazing hearth. Little Tomtit the goldfinch sits sleeping on his perch, or cocks his eye at a sudden crackling of the fire for a familiar squint upon our family group.
But there is no future without its straggling clouds. Even now a shadow is trailing along the landscape.
It is a soft and mild day of summer. The leaves are at their fullest. A southern breeze has been blowing up the valley all the morning, and the light, smoky haze hangs in the distant mountain gaps, like a veil on beauty. Jamie has been busy with his lessons, and afterward playing with Milo upon the lawn. Little Carry has come in from a long ride—her face blooming, and her eyes all smiles and joy. The mother has busied herself with those flowers she loves so well. Little Paul, they say, has been playing in the meadow, and old Tray has gone with him.
But at dinner time Paul has not come back.
“Paul ought not to ramble off so far,” I say.
The mother says nothing, but there is a look of anxiety upon her face that disturbs me. Jamie wonders where Paul can be, and he saves for him whatever he knows Paul will like—a heaping plateful. But the dinner hour passes and Paul does not come. Old Tray lies in the sunshine by the porch.