CHAPTER I
“NAE POSSIBLE!” SAID TIBBIE
Sorrow does not hold the young heart long enthralled. It is as well it should be so. It is for the old to feel sad, unless they can see in imagination the bright and gladsome light that shines behind the pall of Death. But the young—no, sorrow ought to be neither kith nor kin to them.
Back again, then, at the dear old farm of Kilbuie, with Willie as his constant companion, for the lad had come to spend a long holiday, with frequent visits to the house of his best of friends, Mackenzie the minister, with many a little fishing excursion, in company with little Maggie May and happy-go-lucky Tyro the collie—excursions that somehow always ended in a kind of picnic—Sandie began to forget the sad and gloomsome ending to his fishing experiences.
But the corn was now changing in patches from green to yellow. Soon it would be all ablaze, and then there would be but little time to spend in picnics or in fishing.
Willie had declared himself determined to assist at harvest work. He could bind the sheaves if he could do nothing else, and he could carry and stook them, that is, set them up together, that they might get dry and more thoroughly ripe in the sunshine.
He had provided himself with a wonderful canvas apron, that quite enveloped all his person in front, from chin to ankles.
“I daresay,” said Willie, as he saw Jeannie—Mrs. Duncan, we ought now to call her—smiling, “I daresay I look a bit of a guy, but I don’t mind, because it will save my clothes. Do you see, Mrs. Jeannie?”
“I see,” said Jeannie, “you’re a thrifty lad.”
. . . . . .