Читать книгу Morag: A Tale of the Highlands of Scotland - Janet Milne Rae - Страница 7

Table of Contents

THE FIR-WOOD.

HAT a glorious day it is, Ellis! How I wish I could spend the whole of it out of doors!" exclaimed Blanche, as she lazily stretched herself, before making the supreme effort of getting out of bed. "You've no idea how dreadful it is to be shut up for a whole morning in that horrid schoolroom, with the 'History of England,' and that wearisome geography book. I have got the boundaries of China, and ever so much, for my lesson to-day. I'm sure I don't care to know how China is bounded. I shall certainly never go there, on any account. Do you know, Ellis, the Chinese are so cruel? They shut up women, and pinch their toes, and all kinds of things."

"La! missie; you don't say so?" exclaimed Ellis, getting interested, for she delighted in the sensational.

"Oh, yes; indeed they do. They are such horrid creatures! So ugly, too. I've seen pictures of them. Do you know, Ellis, they actually wear tails?" continued Blanche, gratified to see that her maid was interested in her information.

"Come now, missie, you'll be makin' them out to be regular animals, and that I won't believe, noways," retorted Ellis, as she vigorously brushed Blanche's long curls.

"But, indeed, the Chinese do have tails. It's just the way they do their back hair, you know, Ellis," replied Blanche in an explanatory tone, as she turned to look out at the window. "Oh! what a glorious hill that is, with its blue peak right away in the clouds! I wonder what is the name of it? How nice it would be to know all the boundaries of Glen Eagle, now—to be able to tell the names of every mountain, and to know which was really the highest; for yesterday that dark hill looked much higher than it does to-day. Don't you remember those soldiers we saw in Devonshire, last year, Ellis? They were making a military survey, Miss Prosser told me. How I should like to make a military survey! It would be real work, you know, and I should go out in the morning and come in at night;" and inspired by the grandeur of the idea, Blanche pirouetted round the room, greatly to the disarranging of Ellis's careful toilette, and finally she ran away down-stairs to join Miss Prosser.

After breakfast, Blanche was moving away, in a disconsolate frame of mind, towards the schoolroom. She looked longingly through the open door, as she crossed the hall, but at length sat down to her books with a resigned sigh. Miss Prosser had followed her, and stood at the table smiling rather mysteriously, as she listened to her pupil's sigh.

"You need not sit down to your lessons this morning, Blanche, dear, unless indeed you are especially anxious to study. Your papa has expressed a wish that you should have no lessons for a short time. I must say I rather regret it, my dear Blanche; you are so behind; there is so much ground to be gone over."

With the last remark Blanche heartily agreed; but it was moorland, not mental ground, which she was thinking of. She began to put away her schoolbooks in an ecstasy of delight, while Miss Prosser continued—

"I have a slight headache this morning, and shall not be able to go out to walk with you; but I have given Ellis orders to accompany you, as I really cannot expose myself to the sun."

"Oh, please, do let me go out all by myself, only this once? Indeed, I shall not do anything foolish," pleaded Blanche.

Miss Prosser seemed disposed to be yielding, and at length Blanche started, accompanied by her dog Chance. She got strict injunctions not to get into danger of any kind, and on no account to go beyond the castle grounds; but this boundary line being quite undefined in Blanche's mind, it gave ample scope for extensive rambling.

Blanche felt quite in a perplexity of happiness when she found herself under the blue sky, left entirely to the freedom of her will. It was the first time in her life that she had been so trusted, and she thought it felt like what people call "beginning life." She had crossed the bridge that spanned the river below the castle, and now she stood between two divergent roads, each threading their white winding way through different parts of the Glen. So much did Blanche feel the extreme importance of the occasion, that she had difficulty in making up her mind which path to choose, and stood hesitating, till Chance, with a wag of his tail, set out to walk along one of them, looking back at his little mistress, as if he meant to say, "Come along; anything is better than indecision: we're sure to find something pleasant in this direction."

The remembrance of the little window visitor was still uppermost in Blanche's mind; but she had heard her father say that nobody except their own servants lived within miles of the castle; so she concluded the little girl's home must be very far away, and that there was little chance of meeting with her in her rambles of to-day. Then she had seemed so frightened, and ran away so quickly, that it was not likely she would repeat her visit to the schoolroom window; indeed it was to be hoped not, Blanche thought, since Miss Prosser would be the sole occupant that morning. The little damsel, with her elf-locks, had already begun to take her place in Blanche's imagination among the fairies and heroines of her story-books—a pleasant mystery round which to weave a day dream, when there was nothing more attractive within reach. But on this morning were not Chance and she beginning life together, with all kinds of delicious possibilities before them along this white winding road? At every turn she came upon new wonders and treasures, and her frock was being rapidly filled with a miscellaneous collection of wild-flowers, curious mosses, and stray feathers of mountain birds.

The road lay between stretches of moorland, which not many years before had been covered by trees, but now only a gnarled stump, scattered here and there, told of the departed forest. After Blanche had wandered a long way, following the abrupt turnings of the hilly path, she noticed that a shadow fell across the road, and looked up to see great trees all round, thronging as far as her eye could reach, till in the depths of the forest it seemed as dark as night; while in some parts the sunlight struggled through, and shone, like flames of fire, on the old red trunks of the fir-trees. Blanche, before she knew it, had already penetrated into the forest, and stood awe-struck gazing down the great aisles made by the pillars of pine rearing themselves high and stately with their arching green boughs against the sky. The remembrance of a grand old minster, where her father had taken her to church one Sunday in spring, rose to Blanche's recollection; those wonderful trees seemed strangely like the fretted columns among which she had stood that day. She had heard her father say that there was no church within miles of Glen Eagle, and she wondered why they could not come here to service on Sundays. The choristers' voices would sound so beautiful, and the great floor, covered with brown fir-needles, and the lichen-spotted stones studded over it, would be much nicer than a pew.

Blanche, as was her custom when she felt happy, sang snatches of songs as she wandered on through the forest, stooping every now and then to gather treasures from among the fir-needles. At last she sat down and began to pick up some attractive-looking green cones, which had fallen the last time the storm had swung the great fir-trees. And as she sat there, absorbed in gathering cones, her voice went up clear and musical through the arched boughs, as she sang, almost unconsciously, some verses of a hymn which she once learnt—