Freaks on the Fells: Three Months' Rustication by R. M. Ballantyne (top ten ebook reader .txt) 📕

For some time after this the Sudberry Family were particularly careful not to wander too far from their mountain home. Mr Sudberry forbade everyone, on pain of his utmost displeasure, to venture up among the hills without McAllister or one of his lads as a guide. As a further precaution, he wrote for six pocket compasses to be forwarded as soon as possible.

“My dear,” said his wife, “since you are writing home, you may as well—”

“My dear, I am not writing—”

“You’re writing to London for compasses, are you not?”

“No,” said Mr Sudberry with a smile. “I believe they understand how to manufacture the mariner’s compass in Scotland—I am writing to my Edinburgh agent for them.”

“Oh! ah well, it did not occur to me. Now you mention it, I think I have heard that the Scotch have sort of scientific tendencies.”

“Yes, they are ‘feelosophically’ inclined, as our friend McAllister would say. But what did you want, my love?”

“I want a hobby-horse to be sent to us for Jacky; but it will be of no use writing to Edinburgh for one. I suppose they do not use such things in a country where there are so few real horses, and so few roads fit for a horse to walk on.”

Mr Sudberry made no reply, not wishing to incur the expense of such a useless piece of furniture, and his wife continued her needlework with a sigh. From the bottom of her large heart she pitied the Scottish nation, and wondered whether there was the remotest hope of the place ever being properly colonised by the English, and the condition of the aborigines ameliorated.

“Mamma, I’m going with Flora Macdonald to visit her poor people,” said Lucy, entering at the moment with a flushed face,—for Lucy was addicted to running when in a hurry,—and with a coquettish little round straw hat.

“Very well, my love, but do take that good-natured man to guide you—Mr What’s-his-name, I’ve such a memory! Ah! McCannister; do take him with you, dear.”

“There is no need, mamma. Nearly all the cottages lie along the road-side, and Flora is quite at home here, you know.”

“True, true, I forgot that.”

Mrs Sudberry sighed and Lucy laughed gaily as she ran down the hill to meet her friend. The first cottage they visited was a little rough thatched one with a low roof; one door, and two little windows, in which latter there were four small panes of glass, with a knot in each. The interior was similar to that of old Moggy’s hut, but there was more furniture in it, and the whole was pervaded by an air of neatness and cleanliness that spoke volumes for its owner.

“This is Mrs Cameron’s cottage,” whispered Flora as they entered. “She was knocked over by a horse while returning from church last Sunday, and I fear has been badly shaken.—Well, Mrs Cameron, how are you to-day?”

A mild little voice issued from a box-bed in a corner of the room. “Thankee, mem, I’m no that ill, mem. The Lord is verra kind to me.”—There was a mild sadness in the tone, a sort of “the world’s in an awfu’ state,—but no doot it’s a’ for the best, an’ I’m resigned to my lot, though I wadna objec’ to its being a wee thing better, oo-ay,”—feeling in it, which told of much sorrow in years gone by, and of deep humility, for there was not a shade of complaint in the tone.

“Has the doctor been to see you, my dear granny?” inquired Flora, sitting down at the side of the box-bed, while Lucy seated herself on a stool and tried to pierce the gloom within.

“Oo, ay, he cam’ an’ pood aff ma mutch, an’ feel’d ma heed a’ over, but he said nothin’—only to lie quiet an’ tak a pickle water-gruel, oo-ay.”

As the voice said this its owner raised herself on one elbow, and, peering out with a pair of bright eyes, displayed to her visitor the small, withered, yet healthy countenance of one who must have been a beautiful girl in her youth. She was now upwards of seventy, and was, as Lucy afterwards said, “a sweet, charming, dear old woman.” Her features were extremely small and delicate, and her eyes had an anxious look, as if she were in the habit of receiving periodical shocks of grief, and were wondering what shape the next one would take.

“I have brought you a bottle of wine,” said Flora; “now don’t shake your head—you must take it; you cannot get well on gruel. Your daughter is at our house just now: I shall meet her on my way home, and will tell her to insist on your taking it.”

The old woman smiled, and looked at Lucy.

“This is a friend whom I have brought to see you,” said Flora, observing the glance. The old woman held out her hand, and Lucy pressed it tenderly. “She has come all the way from London to see our mountains, granny.”

“Ay?” said the old woman with a kind motherly smile: “it’s a lang way to Lunnon, a lang way, ay. Ye’ll be thinkin’ we’re a wild kind o’ folk here-away; somewhat uncouth we are, no doot.”

“Indeed, I think you are very nice people,” said Lucy, earnestly. “I had no idea how charming your country was, until I came to it.”

“Oo-ay! we can only get ideas by seein’ or readin’. It’s a grawnd thing, travellin’, but it’s wonderfu’ what readin’ ’ll do. My guid-man, that’s deed this therteen year,—ay,—come Marti’mas, he wrought in Lunnon for a year before we was marrit, an’ he sent me the newspapers reglar once a month—ay, the English is fine folk. My guid-man aye said that.”

Lucy expressed much interest in this visit of the departed guid-man, and, having touched a chord which was extremely sensitive and not easily put to rest after having been made to vibrate, old Mrs Cameron entertained her with a sweet and prolix account of the last illness, death, and burial of the said guid-man, with the tears swelling up in her bright old eyes and hopping over her wrinkled cheeks, until Flora forbade her to say another word, reminding her of the doctor’s orders to keep quiet.

“Oo-ay, ye’ll be gawin’ to read me a bit o’ the book?”

“I thought you would ask that; what shall it be?”

“Oo, ye canna go wrang.”

Flora opened the Bible, and, selecting a passage, read it in a slow, clear tone, while the old woman lay back and listened with her eyes upturned and her hands clasped.

“Isn’t it grawnd?” said she, appealing to Lucy with a burst of feeling, when Flora had concluded.

Lucy was somewhat taken aback by this enthusiastic display of love for the Bible, and felt somewhat embarrassed for an appropriate answer; but Flora came to her rescue:

“I have brought you a book, granny; it will amuse you when you are able to get up and read. There now, no thanks—you positively must lie down and try to sleep. I see your cheek is flushed with all this talking. Good-day, granny!”

“The next whom we will visit is a very different character,” said Flora, as they walked briskly along the road that followed the windings of the river; “he dwells half a mile off.”

“Then you will have time to tell me about old Moggy,” said Lucy. “You have not yet fulfilled your promise to tell me the secret connected with her, and I am burning with impatience to know it.”

“Of course you are; every girl of your age is set on fire by a secret. I have a mind to keep you turning a little longer.”

“And pray, grandmamma,” said Lucy, with an expressive twinkle in her eyes, “at what period of your prolonged life did you come to form such a just estimate of character in girls of my age?”

“I’ll answer that question another time,” said Flora; “meanwhile, I will relent and tell you about old Moggy. But, after all, there is not much to tell, and there is no secret connected with her, although there is a little mystery.”

“No secret, yet a mystery! a distinction without a difference, it seems to me.”

“Perhaps it is. You shall hear:—

“When a middle-aged woman, Moggy was housekeeper to Mr Hamilton, a landed proprietor in this neighbourhood. Mr Hamilton’s gardener fell in love with Moggy; they married, and, returning to this their native hamlet, settled down in the small hut which the old woman still occupies. They had one daughter, named Mary, after Mr Hamilton’s