Violet ran, swift as her little feet could carry her, and came back laden with all the riches the larder contained, the chief article of which was a chicken-pie, old Mrs Moffatt’s state dish, which had been prepared for the arrival of Mr and Mrs Pringle, who were expected in the afternoon. Vi either forgot, or did not know, the august purpose of this lordly dish: and when were there ever bounds to a child’s hospitality when thus left free to entertain an unexpected visitor? She had some of the pie herself, neglecting her little eggs in compliment to Valentine, who plunged into it, so to speak, body and soul; and they made the heartiest of meals together, with a genuine enjoyment which might have filled an epicure with envy.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Val, with his mouth full; “we’ll go away down by the water-side as far as the linn—were you ever as far as the linn? There’s plenty of primroses there still, if you want them, and I might get you a bird’s nest if you like, though the eggs are all over; and I’ll take one of Sandy’s rods, and perhaps we’ll get some fish; and we can light a fire and roast potatoes: you can’t think how jolly it will be——”
“We?” said Violet, her brown eyes all one glow of brilliant wonder and delight; “do you mean me too?”
“Of course I mean you too—you are the best of them all,” said Val, enthusiastic after his pie; “you never sneak nor whinge, nor say you’re tired, like other girls. Run and get your hat; two is far better fun than one—though it’s very jolly,” he added, not to elate her too much—“all by yourself among the woods. But stop a minute, let’s think all we’ll take; if we stay all day we’ll get hungry, and you can’t always catch fish when you want to. Where’s a basket?—I think we’d better have the pie.”
A cold shiver came over Violet as she asked herself what old Jean would say; but the virtue of hospitality was too strong in her small bosom to permit any objection to her guest’s proposal. “After all, it’s papa’s and mamma’s, not old Jean’s—it’s not like stealing,” Vi said to herself. So the pie was put into the basket, and some cheese from the larder, and some scones, and biscuits, and oatcake; the jam Vi objected to, tidiness here outdoing even hospitality. “The jam always upsets, and there’s a mess,” she said, with a little moue of disgust, remembering past experiences; therefore the jam was left behind. Valentine shouldered the basket manfully when all was packed. “You can bring it home full of flowers,” he said—a suggestion which filled up the silent transport in Violet’s mind. Had it really arrived to her, who was only a girl, nothing more, to “play truant” for a whole day in the woods? the thought was almost too ecstatic—for you see Violet in all her little life had never done anything very wicked before, and her whole being thrilled with delightful expectation. Val put the basket down upon the dyke, pausing for one last deliberation upon all the circumstances before they made their start; while Violet, scarcely able to fathom his great thoughts and advanced generalship, watched him eagerly, divining each word before he said it, with her glowing eyes.
“We shan’t go by the road,” said Val, meditatively, “for we might be seen. You don’t mind the ferns being a little damp, do you, Vi? If you hold the basket till I get down, I’ll lift you over. But look here, haven’t you got a cloak or something? Run and fetch your cloak—look sharp; I’ll wait here till you come back.”
Violet flew like the wind for her little blue cloak, which, by good luck, was waterproof, before she plunged down with her leader into the wet ferns. Poor little Vi! that first plunge was rather disheartening, after all her delightful anticipations. The ferns were almost as tall as she was; and her little varnished shoes, her cotton stockings and frock, were small protection from the wet. Excitement kept her up for some time; but when her companion, far in advance of her, called loudly to Vi to come on, I think nothing but the dread of being taunted with cowardice ever after, and shut out from further participation in such expeditions, kept the child from breaking down. She held out valiantly, however, and after various adventures—one of which consisted in a scramble up to Val’s favourite seat among the high branches, whither he half dragged, half carried her, leaving the basket at the foot of the tree—they reached the bank on the side of the water where the sun shone, and dried her wet skirts and shoes. Here the true delight of the truants began. “Take off your shoes and stockings, and I’ll put them in the sun to dry,” said Val, who, in his rough way, took care of her; and Violet had never known any sensation so delightful as the touch of the warm, mossy, velvet grass upon her small bare feet, except the other sensation of feeling the warm shallow water ripple over them, as Val helped her out by the stepping-stones to the great boulders at the side of the linn. The opposite bank was one waving mass of foliage, in all the tender tints of the early summer; whilst on that along which the children had been strolling, the trees retired a little, to leave a lovely grassy knoll, with an edge of golden sand and sparkling pebbles. Through this green world the Esk ran, fretted by the opposition of the rocks, foaming over them so close by Violet’s side that, perched upon her boulder, she could put her hand into the foaming current, and feel it rush in silken violence, warm and strong, carrying away with lightning speed the flowers she dropped into it—till her own childish head grew giddy, and she felt all but whirled away herself, notwithstanding that she sat securely in an arm-chair of rock, where her guardian had placed her. Vi would have been happy, beyond words to tell, thus seated almost in the middle of the stream, with the water rushing and foaming, the leaves shining and rustling, the whole universe full of nothing but melodious storms of soft sound—loud, yet soft, penetrating heart and soul—had it not been for the freaks of that wild guardian, who would perch himself on the topmost point of the boulder on one foot, with the other extended over the rushing linn; or jump the chasm back and forward with shouts of joyous laughter, indifferent to all her remonstrances, which, indeed, he did not hear in the roar of the waterfall. But the fearful joy was sweet, though mixed with panic indescribable. “Oh, Val, if you had fallen in!” she cried, half hysterical with fright and pleasure, when they got back in safety to the grassy bank. I suspect Val was rather glad to be back too in safety, though he could not restrain the masculine impulse of showing his prowess, and dazzling and frightening the small woman who furnished the most appreciative audience Val had ever yet encountered in his short life.
I need not attempt to describe the consternation which filled all bosoms in the two houses from which the truants had fled, when their absence was discovered. The Pringles arrived to find their chicken-pie gone, and their daughter—and Lady Eskside white with terror, consulting with old Jean Moffatt at the cottage door. Jean was not so deeply alarmed, and could not restrain her sense of the joke, the ravished larder, and the prudent provision of the runaways; but poor Lady Eskside did not see the joke. “How can we tell the children alone did it?” she cried, with terrible thoughts in her mind of some gipsy rescue—some wild attempt of the boy’s mother to take him away again. She was ghastly with fear as she examined the marks on the dyke where the culprits had scrambled over. “No bairn ever did that,” cried the old lady, infecting Mr Pringle at least with her terrors. Lord Eskside and Harding and the gamekeepers were dispersed over the woods in all directions, searching for the lost children, and the old lady was on her way to the lower part of the stream, though all agreed it was almost impossible that little Vi could have walked so far as the linn, the most dangerous spot on Esk. “Would you like to come with me?” my lady said with white lips to Mrs Pringle, whose steady bosom, accustomed to the vagaries of seven boys, took less alarm, but who was sufficiently annoyed and anxious to accept the offer. Mr Pringle got over the dyke in the traces of the fugitives, to follow their route to the same spot, and thus all was excitement and alarm in the peaceful place. “It is not the linn I fear—it is those wild folk,” cried poor Lady Eskside in the misery of her suspense, forgetting that it was her adversary’s wife who was also her fellow-sufferer. But good Mrs Pringle was nobody’s adversary, and had long ago given up all thought of the Eskside lordship. She received this agitated confidence calmly. “They could have no reason to carry off my little Vi,” she said, with unanswerable good sense. The two ladies drove down the other side of the hill to the water-side, a little below the linn, and leaving the carriage, walked up the stream—one of them at least with such tortures of anxiety in her breast, as the mother of an only child alone can know. Mrs Pringle was a little uneasy too, but her boys had been in so many scrapes, out of which they had scrambled with perfect safety, that her feelings were hardened by long usage. At the linn some traces were visible, which still further consoled Violet’s mother, but did not affect Lady Eskside—Violet’s little handkerchief to wit, very wet, rather dirty, and full of wild flowers. “They have been playing here,” said the more composed mother. “She has been here,” cried the old lady; “but oh, my boy! my boy!”
“I see something among the trees yonder,” cried Mrs Pringle, running on. Lady Eskside was over sixty, but she ran too, lighter of foot than her younger companion, and inspired with fears impossible to the other. The sun had set by this time, but the light had not waned—it had only changed its character, as the light of a long summer evening in Scotland changes, magically, into a something which is not day, but as clear as day, sweeter and paler—a visionary light in which spirits might walk abroad, and all sweet visions become possible. Hurrying through this tender, pale illumination of the woodland world about them, the two ladies came suddenly upon a scene which neither of them, I think, ever forgot. It was like a tender travesty, half touching, half comic, of some maturer tale. Between two great trees lay a little glade of the softest mossy grass, with all kinds of brown velvet touches of colour breaking its soft green; vast beech-boughs, stretching over it like a canopy, and a gleam of the river just visible. Over the foreground were scattered the remains of a meal, the central point of which—the dish which had once been a pie—caught Mrs Pringle’s rueful gaze at once. A mass of half-faded flowers, a few late primroses, mixed with the pretty though scentless blue violet which grows along with them, lay dropped about in all directions, having been, it appeared, crazily propped up as an ornament to the rustic dinner-table. Against the further tree were the little runaways—Violet huddled up in her blue cloak, with nothing of her visible but her little head slightly thrown back, leaning half on the tree, half on her companion, who, supporting himself against the trunk, gave her a loyal shoulder to rest upon. The little girl had cried herself to sleep—tears were still upon her long eyelashes, and the little pouting rose-mouth was drawn down at the corners. But Valentine was not sleeping. He was pondering terrible thoughts under his knitted brows. How he was ever to get home—how he was ever to get her home! The boy was chilled and depressed and worn out, and awful anticipations were in his mind. What would happen if they had to stay there all night through the midnight darkness, among the stirrings of the mysterious woods? Val knew what strange sounds the woods make when it is dark, and you are alone in them—and a whole night! His mind was too much confused to hear the soft steps of the two ladies who stood behind the other big beech, looking, without a word, at this pretty scene—Lady Eskside, for her part, too much overpowered by the sudden sense of relief to be able to speak. I am not sure that a momentary regret over her chicken-pie did not make itself felt in Mrs Pringle’s soul; but she, too, paused with a little emotion to look at the unconscious baby-pair, leaning against each other in mutual support; the little woman overwhelmed with remorse and fatigue, the little man moody and penitent over the dregs of the feast, and the wild career of pleasure past. But just then there came a crash of branches, and louder steps resounding down the brae among the ferns, which made Val’s face light up with hope and shame, and woke little Violet from her momentary oblivion. Lord Eskside’s party of beaters, and Mr Pringle, solitary but vigorous, all converged at the same moment upon this spot. “Here, my lord,” said Willie Maitland’s hearty voice, with laughter that made the woods ring—“here are your babes in the wood.”