A children's tea-party in a Highland barn sounds a trivial sort of affair; and, as a spectacle, would doubtless suffer in contrast with a fancy-dress ball in Kensington or with a State concert at Buckingham Palace. But human nature is the important thing, after all, no matter what the surroundings may be; and if one considers what the ordinary life of these children was—the dull monotony of it in those far and bleak solitudes; their ignorance of pantomime transformation scenes; their lack of elaborately illustrated fairy tales, and similar aids to the imagination enjoyed by more fortunate young people elsewhere—it was surely an interesting kind of project to bring these bairns away from the homely farm or the keeper's cottage, in the depth of mid-winter, and to march them through the blackness of a January evening into a suddenly opening wonderland of splendour and colour and festivity. They were not likely to remember that this was but a barn—this beautiful place, with its blazing candelabra, and its devices of evergreens and great white and red roses, and the long table sumptuously set forth, and each guest sitting down, finding himself or herself a capitalist to the extent of sevenpence. And so warm and comfortable the lofty building was; and so brilliant and luminous with those circles of candles; and the loud strains of the pipes echoing through it—giving them a welcome just as if they were grown-up people: no wonder they stared mostly in silence at first, and seemed awestruck, and perhaps were in doubt whether this might not be some Cinderella kind of feast, that they might suddenly be snatched away from—and sent back again through the cold and the night to the far and silent cottage in the glen. But this feeling soon wore off; for it was no mystical fairy—though she seemed more beautiful and gracious, and more richly attired than any fairy they had ever dreamed about—who went swiftly here and there and everywhere, arranging their seats for them, laughing and talking with them, forgetting not one of their names, and as busy and merry and high-spirited as so great an occasion obviously demanded.
Moreover, is it not in these early years that ideals are unconsciously being formed—from such experiences as are nearest?—ideals that in after-life may become standards of conduct and aims. They had never seen any one so gentle-mannered as this young lady who was at once their hostess and the little mother of them all, nor any one so dignified and yet so simple and good-humoured and kind. They could not but observe with what marked respect Ronald Strang (a most important person in their eyes) treated her—insisting on her changing places with him, lest she should be in a draught when the door was opened; and not allowing her to touch the teapots that came hot and hot from the kitchen, lest she should burn her fingers; he pouring out the tea himself, and rather clumsily too. And if their ideal of sweet and gracious womanhood (supposing it to be forming in their heads) was of but a prospective advantage, was there not something of a more immediate value to them in thus being allowed to look on one who was so far superior to the ordinary human creatures they saw around them? She formed an easy key to the few imaginative stories they were familiar with. Cinderella, for example: when they read how she fascinated the prince at the ball, and won all hearts and charmed all eyes, they could think of Miss Douglas, and eagerly understand. The Queen of Sheba, when she came in all her splendour: how were these shepherds' and keepers' and crofters' children to form any notion of her appearance but by regarding Miss Douglas in this beautiful and graceful attire of hers? In point of fact, her gown was but of plain black silk; but there was something about the manner of her wearing it that had an indefinable charm; and then she had a singularly neat collar and a pretty ribbon round her neck; and there were slender silver things gleaming at her wrists from time to time. Indeed, there was no saying for how many heroines of history or fiction Miss Meenie Douglas had unconsciously to herself to do duty—in the solitary communings of a summer day's herding, or during the dreary hours in which these hapless little people were shut up in some small, close, overcrowded parish church, supposing that they lived anywhere within half a dozen miles of such a building: now she would be Joan of Arc, or perhaps Queen Esther that was so surpassing beautiful, or Lord Ullin's daughter that was drowned within sight of Ulva's shores. And was it not sufficiently strange that the same magical creature, who represented to them everything that was noble and beautiful and refined and queen-like, should now be moving about amongst them, cutting cake for them, laughing, joking, patting this one or that on the shoulder, and apparently quite delighted to wait on them and serve them?
The introductory singing of the Old Hundredth Psalm was, it must be confessed, a failure. The large majority of the children present had never either heard or seen a piano; and when Meenie went to that strange-looking instrument (it had been brought over from her mother's cottage with considerable difficulty), and when she sate down and struck the first deep resounding chords—and when Ronald, at his end of the table, led off the singing with his powerful tenor voice—they were far too much interested and awestruck to follow. Meenie sang, in her quiet clear way, and Maggie timidly joined in, but the children were silent. However, as has already been said, the restraint that was at first pretty obvious very soon wore off; the tea and cake were consumed amid much general hilarity and satisfaction; and when in due course the Chairman rose to deliver his address, and when Miss Douglas tapped on the table to secure attention, and also by way of applause, several of the elder ones had quite enough courage and knowledge of affairs to follow her example, so that the speaker may be said to have been received with favour.
And if there were any wise ones there, whose experience had taught them that tea and cake were but a snare to entrap innocent people into being lectured and sermonised, they were speedily reassured. The Chairman's address was mostly about starlings and jays and rabbits and ferrets and squirrels; and about the various ways of taming these, and teaching them; and of his own various successes and failures when he was a boy. He had to apologise at the outset for not speaking in the Gaelic; for he said that if he tried they would soon be laughing at him; he would have to speak in English; but if he mentioned any bird or beast whose name they did not understand, they were to ask him, and he would tell them the Gaelic name. And very soon it was clear enough that this was no lecture on the wanderings of the children of Israel, nor yet a sermon on justification by faith; the eager eyes of the boys followed every detail of the capture of the nest of young ospreys; the girls were like to cry over the untimely fate of a certain tame sparrow that had strayed within the reach—or the spring rather—of an alien cat; and general laughter greeted the history of the continued and uncalled-for mischiefs and evil deeds of one Peter, a squirrel but half reclaimed from its savage ways, that had cost the youthful naturalist much anxiety and vexation, and also not a little blood. There was, moreover, a dark and wild story of revenge—on an ill-conditioned cur that was the terror of the whole village, and was for ever snapping at girls' ankles and boys' legs—a most improper and immoral story to be told to young folks, though the boys seemed to think the ill-tempered beast got no more than it deserved. That small village, by the way, down there in the Lothians, seemed to have been a very remarkable place; the scene of the strangest exploits and performances on the part of terriers, donkeys, pet kittens, and tame jackdaws; haunted by curious folk, too, who knew all about bogles and kelpies and such uncanny creatures, and had had the most remarkable experiences of them (though modern science was allowed to come in here for a little bit, with its cold-blooded explanations of the supernatural). And when, to finish up this discursive and apparently aimless address, he remarked that the only thing lacking in that village where he had been brought up, and where he had observed all these incidents and wonders, was the presence of a kind-hearted and generous young lady, who, on an occasion, would undertake all the trouble of gathering together the children for miles around, and would do everything she could to make them perfectly happy, they knew perfectly well whom he meant; and when he said, in conclusion, that if they knew of any such an one about here, in Inver-Mudal, and if they thought that she had been kind to them, and if they wished to show her that they were grateful to her for her goodness, they could not do better than give her three loud cheers, the lecture came to an end in a perfect storm of applause; and Meenie—blushing a little, and yet laughing—had to get up and say that she was responsible for the keeping of order by this assembly, and would allow no speech-making and no cheering that was not put down in the programme.
After this there was a service of raisins; and in the general quiet that followed Mr. Murray came into the room, just to see how things were going on. Now the innkeeper considered himself to be a man of a humorous turn; and when he went up to shake hands with Miss Douglas, and looked down the long table, and saw Ronald presiding at the other end, and her presiding at this, and all the children sitting so sedately there, he remarked to her in his waggish way—
'Well, now, for a young married couple, you have a very large family.'
But Miss Douglas was not a self-conscious young person, nor easily alarmed, and she merely laughed and said—
'I am sure they are a very well-behaved family indeed.'
But Ronald, who had not heard the jocose remark, by the way, objected to any one coming in to claim Miss Douglas's attention on so important an occasion; and in his capacity of Chairman he rose and rapped loudly on the table.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, 'we're not going to have any idlers here the night. Any one that bides with us must do something. I call on Mr. Murray to sing his well-known song, "Bonnie Peggie, O."'