“I’m but a poor ignorant sinfu’ woman, my dear bairn,” said she humbly; “I havna lived up to the little light I have, and it’s no for me to teach you. But one thing I can tell you: read your Bible, and ask the Lord Himself to teach you, and you’ll need no other teaching, or if you do He’ll provide it. But see, the fire’s near out, and it’s more than time you were down the stair, and I must go to my bed. So good night to you, and mind your prayers.”
“Good night,” said Frederica, and she went downstairs pondering many things.
Chapter Seven.
Attached to the large old-fashioned house in which Mrs Glencairn lived were a garden and orchard of very large old apple trees, which now in the spring time were full of wonderful possibilities for enjoyment and amusement to children who had for the most part been obliged to find amusement within doors during the long winter. And so no wonder that Frederica, without whom no game was complete, should forget her serious thoughts, and her troubles, and even her mother’s doubtful state, unless something particularly recalled them to her mind. She was such a little creature, that, though she led the elder girls in their lessons, and was indeed far before them, she did not seem to be at all out of place when she led the plays and games of the little girls too.
Even in her visits to the garret, with her “Animated Nature” in her hand, she and Eppie kept to the safe subject of beasts and birds and creeping things, in the discussions into which they fell. She had taken up botany, too, in a less elementary form than had been given her before, and her interest was greatly quickened, and her attention happily given to it. And strange to say, Eppie, the recluse of the garret, who had not set her foot on a green thing growing beyond the orchard for many a year and day, even she gave eager interest and stimulus to the girl’s pursuit, and with spectacles on nose peered into triticums and anemones brought from the mountain, and into apple blossoms, and even into dandelions and buttercups gathered in the orchard, for want of rarer flowers.
“And what for no,” said Eppie, “when Solomon himself, the wisest of kings and men, spoke about green growing things from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall? And God made them a’. They mind me of my father’s house and the fir belting, and the heather hills beyond. And they mind me o’ the days o’ my youth, that are gone like a blink,” added she with a sigh.
“Yes,” said Frederica, turning compassionate eyes on the kindly wrinkled old face.
“I’m no complainin’ you’ll understand. I hae had my day as you’ll have,” said Eppie, nodding her head gently a great many times. “But I was ay fond o’ flowers. I liked to notice their likeness, and their difference, though I didna ken that they were a’ written down in books. Eh! it’s just wonderful how true nature is to herself. That bonny yellow flower might be the one that grew on the bush beside my father’s door, and yon rosebush that Miss Robina brought up the stairs to-day is the very marrow o’ the one that Sandy Gow the laird’s gardener brought down and gave to my sister Annie more than fifty years ago. It’s like a dream to look back upon.”