To Ruby her own mother is nothing more than a name, and Scotland itself not much more. She was only three years old when the new golden-haired mother came home, and but little more when the reverses followed which forced her father to seek his fortune in an unknown land over the sea. And Australia is now, as Ruby has said to Jenny, “home.”
The child goes dancing off, and across the sunshine of the quadrangle to tell Jenny to bring the Christmas dinner in. It is a dinner which is much too hot for an Australian bush Christmas; but, if we happen to be Scottish, let us be Scottish or die!
“I shouldn’t have brought you out here, Dolly,” the husband is saying. He has said the same thing for the last half-dozen years; but that does not mend matters, or bring the faded pink back to his Dolly’s cheeks. But she likes to hear him say it, poor little woman. It shows that he sympathizes with those not always imaginary ailments of hers.
“You’ll take me home again soon, Will,” she coaxes, clinging to him. Unlike Ruby, far-away Scotland is still home to Dora Thorne. “Now that you are getting on so well. Just for a little while to see them all. Couldn’t you manage, Will?”
“No saying, darling,” he responds brightly. He does not think it necessary to trouble this fragile little wife of his with the knowledge that things are not going on quite “so well” at present as she seems to fancy. “Next Christmas Day, God willing, we’ll try to spend in bonnie Scotland. That brings the roses to your cheeks, little girl!”
It has brought the roses to her cheeks, the light to her violet eyes. Dora Thorne looks as young just now as she did one far-off June day when she plighted her troth to the man of her choice in the old parish kirk at home.
“Do you hear what papa says, Ruby?” she says when they are all three sitting at dinner, and the faintest breath of wind is stirring the blue blinds gently. “That we are going to Scotland for next Christmas Day, to dear bonnie Scotland, with its heather and its bluebells. I must write to the home people and tell them to-night. How glad they all will be!”
“O-oh!” cries Ruby, with wide-open brown eyes. Then, as another possibility dawns upon her, “But am I to go too?”
“If we go, of course our little girl will go with us,” her father assures her.
Christmas in Scotland! Ruby seems lost in a happy dream. Scotland! the dear, unknown land where she was born! The land, which to mamma and Jenny is the one land of all, far above all others!