It seemed a pity when Dame Nature had spent her colours so lavishly that there should be no one to see her bright handiwork. Yet, sad to tell, there lay the broad sheet of crimson and gold day after day unnoticed and unheeded, till, in despair, it at length began to wither and blacken and die.
For this was a lonely moor, where the heather and gorse bloomed so bravely, so lonely that even along the road which skirted it the number of those who passed by in a day could be counted on the fingers of your hand; and as for the moor itself, it seldom had any visitors but the cows from the little farm which nestled away in one corner; and do you suppose such lazy, cupboard-loving creatures cared whether the heather bloomed or not, so long as they found grass enough to eat?
But the glorious moor had a worse indignity than this to endure, for there was a cottage here and there whose inhabitants frequently crossed by the beaten tracks, and never so much as lifted their eyes as they passed along, to notice the gorgeous dress their moor had put on. They were so used to it. Had she not worn it every year since they could remember? and so they sauntered by, thinking about eating or drinking, or how they would serve their neighbours out, sometimes even quarrelling loudly, and never giving so much as a passing thought to all the beauty God had spread around them, and which we who dwell in towns would give so much to see.
The sun was shining down very hotly, but it had not yet begun to wither the heather and gorse, on the day when I want you to notice two little children going across the moor. I told you there were cottages here and there, and in a pretty little green hollow just beyond a fair-sized hillock was one where lived the MacDougalls. These two children were Elsie and Duncan MacDougall. They very often crossed the moor, for the farm was on the other side of it, and the milk and butter had all to be fetched from it, the milk twice a day, whether the sun blazed, or the chilly Scottish drizzle blotted out the hills in a misty haze, or the north wind swept across it, and shook the gaunt fir-trees to and fro in its noisy wrath.
"Ain't you coming on, Elsie?" Duncan cried impatiently, for Elsie had seated herself on a big stone, pushed back her sun-bonnet from her damp freckled forehead, crossed her brown arms defiantly over her holland pinafore, and was swinging her bare feet as if she never meant to move another step to-night.
"No, I ain't coming, Duncan, and that's all about it," Elsie replied, sulkily, only she said it in a broad Scottish accent which you would hardly have understood had you heard it, and certainly could make nothing of if I were to try to write it.
"Then we'll get beaten when we get back," Duncan said, miserably. "Mother's always scolding, and it's your fault, Elsie."
Elsie looked at him contemptuously. "Go on by yourself," she cried; "I ain't afraid. It's only Robbie that they're in such a hurry to get the milk for, and I'm not going to hurry for Robbie. Go on by yourself, do."
But this was more than Duncan dared do, and Elsie knew it, for, in the first place, it would have seemed as if he sided with Robbie against Elsie, which would have been quite untrue; and, in the second, it would have got Elsie into trouble with their mother, and that Duncan would not have done for anything in the world. If Elsie had been a queen, then Duncan would have been one of her most willing subjects, and done her bidding whatever it might cost.
So there stood Duncan, fidgeting to get on, yet bound to the spot where Elsie stayed by a bond stronger than links of iron. It was in vain that he fidgeted from one bare foot to the other, or vented his impatience by flinging his Scottish bonnet high in the air and catching it again. Elsie was immovable, for Elsie was in one of her very contrariest moods to-day, and I can hardly describe to you how very contrary she could be.