And again he blushed and smiled, and looked sheepish, and felt happy and sad at once. But Margaret soon found out to his comfort and her own that he was not so advanced in years and knowledge after all,—that he had but slipshod notions as to the manner of washing his hands, and was apt to perform that cleansing business in a very limp and halfhearted fashion. Likewise he had little or no idea as to how he should brush and comb his curly hair,—and it was greatly to Margaret’s delight that she found her services could not be quite dispensed with. She began at once to “arrange” him according to her own particular way of “valeting” a small boy, and presently turned him out to her entire satisfaction in a becoming white flannel suit,—one of the halfdozen Major Desmond had bought him on the way through London,—with a soft blue tie knotted under his little open collar, and the bright waves of his hair disposed to the best advantage. Very sweet and very wistful too the little fellow looked as he then went down to dinner; and Miss Letty’s eyes grew dim with a sudden moisture, as she glanced at him from time to time and noticed, as only a loving woman can, the slight indefinable alterations in him, which, like the faintly pencilled lines in a drawing, were bound to become darker, and gradually to take their place in the whole composition of his life and character. Major Desmond had told her exactly the condition in which he had found him, and as she heard, her heart grew heavy and sore. Why, she thought, if his parents were going to do no more than allow him to run wild among the common boys of a village sea-shore, could they not have given him the chance she had offered? She said something to this effect in half a dozen words to her old friend Dick, who, with a puzzled tug at his white moustache and a shrug of his broad shoulders, gave the matter up as a sort of difficult conundrum.
“But it’s the mother, Letty,—it’s the soft, fat, absurdly self-important mother!” he declared. “Tell you what, Jim D’Arcy-Muir, besotted with drink as he is, knows he is a beast, and that is a great point in his favour. When a man knows he is a beast and admits it, you can give him credit for honesty if for nothing else; and Jim, I firmly believe, would hand you over the little chap at once, and be glad enough to give him such a jolly good start in life. But Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir—there!—she’s a beast too and she doesn’t know it, which makes all the difference. She’s not a beast in drinking—no—but she’s a beast in her sloth and love of muddle and dirt and confusion, and worse than a beast in stupid obstinacy. No one can do anything with her. She will always be a drag on Boy’s wheel!”
“His mother?” suggested Miss Leslie gently.
“Yes, I know. She’s his mother, more’s the pity. The days are coming when he will despise his mother—and that is a very bad look-out for any chap. But it will not be his fault—it will be hers.”
Miss Leslie said no more on the subject just then,—she had Boy at any rate for a month to herself, and she resolved to watch him closely and study his character for herself.
She began a close and tender observation of him,—his manners, his little quaint ways of speech,—and for the first week of his stay with her she noticed nothing to awaken her anxiety. The change from his “scavenger” life on the sea-shore to the elegance and refinement of Miss Letty’s home, combined with the beauty and freshness of an open-air existence in the Scottish Highlands, gave Boy for the time a happy oblivion of all his recent sordid experiences. Fishing, boating, climbing, and riding on a lovable little Shetland pony which his kind hostess had bought for his use—these new and delightful pastimes, so enjoyable to healthy childhood, were all his to try in turn,—and whether he was rushing like a little madcap to the top of a convenient hill to catch a first sight of Major Desmond as he came down from the higher moors with the rest of the shooting-party,—or whether he was helping Miss Letty gather great picturesque bunches of bracken and rowan branches in the woods for the decoration of the house, Boy was unthinkingly and unquestioningly happy. Winsome and bright, he behaved like the real child he truly was in years; he had no time to go away by himself into little corners and think, for there was a boy named Alister McDonald, two years older than himself, who struck up a friendship with him, and had no sort of idea of leaving him alone. This same Alister was a terrible person. He too was an only son,—but his father, Colonel McDonald, was not a “Poo Sing,” but a very fine specimen of a gentleman at his best. He and his wife, a woman of bright disposition and sweet character, had brought up their boy to love all things bold, manly, and true—and Alister had developed the bold and manly by doing everything in the world that could risk his life and get him into a pickle—and his present way of serving the Cause of Truth was to go and tell everything to his mother. The very first day he made acquaintance with Boy, he stuck his small hands in his small trouser pockets and remarked airily,—
“I suppose you’re game for any sort of a lark, ain’t you?”
“I suppose I am!” Boy answered, with a touch of reserved assurance.
“All right! Then we’ll be pals!” Alister had answered, and to prove his sincerity, took Boy at once in charge, and escorted him straight away to a mysterious salmon-pool, where, trying to angle with a long willow wand, a bit of string, and a just killed wasp instead of the orthodox fly, they both very nearly fell in and made an end of their lives. To be the hero of hairbreadth escapes suited Alister perfectly. He always had some dark scheme in his mind—some new plan for generally alarming and exciting the neighbourhood. But as a matter of fact all the people in the place had got pretty well used to the endless scrapes of “Maister Alister” as they called him, and even his mother, whose nerves had undergone many a severe trial concerning the delinquencies of her only darling, had now become more or less resigned to the inevitable. Two or three days of each other’s society were enough to make Boy and Alister inseparables,—and many a hearty roar of laughter did their strange adventures on hill and moor, by stream and loch, cause Major Desmond and his sporting friends,—while kind Miss Letty, with two or three other pleasant ladies who were her guests, laughed with them, and quickly forgave the little truants all their mischief.
One day there came a pause in the merriment,—the heroic Alister was seized with a raging toothache, a malady which might even upset the calm of an Ajax. There was nothing for it but to have the worrying tooth pulled out, whereupon Alister’s mother took him to Edinburgh for the necessary operation. It was a dull, cloudy sort of day,—rain had set in early in the morning, and a furious gust of wind swept the fair waters of Loch Katrine, and bent the silvery birches to and fro till they presented the weird aspect of shivering white ghosts, stooping to bathe their long tresses in the waters, and anon lifting themselves again in attitudes as it seemed of wild despair at the pitiless storm. There was no possibility of either walking or driving or boating, and Alister being away, Boy was rather at a loss what to do with himself. Miss Letty saw him looking a little wistful and wearied, and at once took him in hand herself. Putting her arm around him she said,—