“I’m going to take Nancy’s Bible with me,” he said, smiling and looking half ashamed. “I’ll never part with that.”
“Let me see it,” said Jessie.
He took from his bosom a little old-fashioned Bible, with the Psalms of David—those heavenly gems of poetry and song—in metre at the end of the book, and placed it in the child’s hand.
“You are a very good boy,” she said, for the child felt she must say something.
“But oh!” she added, “here is a pressed primrose in the book.”
“It is one of those you gathered for me; don’t you remember?”
“Oh! yes,” she replied, smiling, “but it looks so lonely; here, place this little tiny bit of heather beside it.”
It was an innocent child-like action to place the bit of heather bloom there with the primrose, but one that Kenneth never forgot.
Archie was indeed a proud boy when Jessie and Miss Gale fell into raptures over the cave. Everything was admired, the heather seats, the rustic sofa, the rude bookcase containing the authors the boys read almost every day, and even the carpet of brackens.
“Did you get them?” said Kenneth in a stage whisper to Archie.