In the light that shines for ever!”
THAT is a long, long day to Ruby. From Glengarry they can watch far away the flames, like so many forked and lurid tongues of fire, leaping up into the still air and looking strangely out of place against the hazy blue of the summer sky. The little girl leaves her almost untouched dinner, and steals out to the verandah, where she sits, a forlorn-looking little figure, in the glare of the afternoon sunshine, with her knees drawn up to her chin, and her brown eyes following eagerly the pathway by the river where she has ridden with Dick no later than this morning. This morning!—to waiting Ruby it seems more like a century ago.
Jenny finds her there when she has washed up the dinner dishes, tidied all for the afternoon, and come out to get what she expresses as a “breath o’ caller air,” after her exertions of the day. The “breath o’ air” Jenny may get; but it will never be “caller” nor anything approaching “caller” at this season of the year. Poor Jenny, she may well sigh for the fresh moorland breezes of bonnie Scotland with its shady glens, where the bracken and wild hyacinth grow, and where the very plash of the mountain torrent or “sough” of the wind among the trees, makes one feel cool, however hot and sultry it may be.
“Ye’re no cryin’, Miss Ruby?” ejaculates Jenny. “No but that the heat o’ this outlandish place would gar anybody cry. What’s wrong wi’ ye, ma lambie?” Jenny can be very gentle upon occasion. “Are ye no weel?” For all her six years of residence in the bush, Jenny’s Scotch tongue is still aggressively Scotch.
Ruby raises a face in which tears and smiles struggle hard for mastery.
“I’m not crying, really, Jenny,” she answers. “Only,” with a suspicious droop of the dark-fringed eye-lids and at the corners of the rosy mouth, “I was pretty near it. It’s dad. I do wish he was home. I can’t help watching the flames, and thinking that something might perhaps be happening to him, and me not there to know. And then I began to feel glad to think how nice it would be to see him and Dick come riding home. Oh! Jenny, how do little girls get along who have no father?”
It is strange that Ruby never reflects that her own mother has gone from her. All her love is centred in dad.
“The Lord A’mighty tak’s care o’ such,” Jenny responds solemnly. “Ye’ll just weary your eyes glowerin’ awa’ at the fire like that, Miss Ruby. They say that ‘a watched pot never boils,’ an’ I’m thinkin’ your papa’ll no come a meenit suner for a’ your watchin’. Gae in an’ rest yersel’ like the mistress. She’s sleepin’ finely on the sofa.”
Ruby gives a little impatient wriggle. “How can I, Jenny,” she exclaims piteously, “when dad’s out there? Oh! I don’t know whatever I would do if anything was to happen to dad.”