From the window of the room in which they stood the view was grand and imposing. Hills and rocks and woods on one side, the lovely glen on the other, and down yonder, stretching away and away to the illimitable horizon, the blue Atlantic dotted here and there with white sails, with one or two steamers in the far offing, ploughing their way northwards, and leaving their trailing wreaths of smoke and long white wakes.
And up from the woods beneath them came a chorus of bird songs. The mellow fluting of the blackbird, the sweat clear notes of the mavis, and bold bright lilt of chaffinch. Nearer still the linnet perched on the whin-bush, and high, high in air, dimly seen against a white fleecy cloud, but easily heard, was the laverock itself.
And the bright pure sunshine was over everything; glittering on the rippling sea, sparkling on the mountain-tops where the snow still lay, patching the woods with light and shadow, heightening the green of moss and heather, changing the streams into threadlets of silver, spreading out the petals of half-open flowers, the gowans on the lea, goldilocks by the meadow’s brink, awakening the bees, and causing ten thousand, thousand rainbow-coloured insects to join in the song of gladness that rose everywhere on this lovely spring morning, from nature to nature’s God.
Tom and his companion stood long enough at the window to drink in the essence of the glorious scene, but no longer. The day was young, and they were young. There was a moping owl up in the ivy yonder; they would leave the ruined castle to him, while they should go forth and mingle with, and become part and parcel of, all the light and loveliness that made up the day.
“Come, ’Theena, we mustn’t keep the fish waiting. Come, Connie; and you must not go and bathe and splash to-day in the stream where we are fishing. ’Theena, I want to get a basket full to the top with such trout that will make Dick and Jack want to kick themselves with jealousy.”
And off they went, and no one saw either of them again till the sun was going down behind the sea, and changing the waves into billows of blood.
CHAPTER V.
“THE WHOLE WORLD IS FULL OF CHANGES.”
“WELL,” said Uncle Robert one morning some time after this, “if anybody twenty years ago had prophesied that I should become a schoolmaster in my declining years, I should have laughed at him. But come, there is no help for it, and by good luck I’ve got two of the dearest and best little pupils that ever any teacher could desire.”
Perhaps, though, no boy or girl either was ever taught on so delightful a system before. For, every morning after breakfast—well rolled in fear-nothing plaids if it happened to be raining—Uncle Robert, with Tom and ’Theena, took their way towards the pine-wood and the hermitage. If Dick and Jack happened to be about when they started, they were sure to give them a hail.
“Good-bye, Eenie-’Theenie,” Dick would cry.