The Garret and the Garden by Robert Michael Ballantyne (reading cloud ebooks .TXT) 📕

vivant_.

Another moment and hands were being heartily shaken with the insides. But David did not linger. Nodding pleasantly to the tiger, he held up both hands. Being so tall, he just managed to reach those of Susan, as she stood up in the rumble.

"Jump!" he said; "ye needna fear, my lassie."

Susan jumped, and was made to alight on Scottish soil like a feather of eider-down. Laidlaw stooped, apparently to whisper something in the girl's ear, but, to the unspeakable delight of the observant tiger, he failed to get past the mouth, and whispered it there!

"Go it, Da-a-a-vid!" exclaimed the urchin, with a patronising wink and a broad smile.

"Look there, Susy," said Laidlaw, pointing to the sun-bathed cottage.

"Home?" asked the maiden, with an inquiring glance.

"Hame!" responded David. "Mither is waiting for 'e there. Do ye see the track across the field where the burn rins? It's a short cut. The coach'll have to gang roond by the brig. Rin, lassie!"

He released Susy, who sprang down the bank, crossed the streamlet by a plank bridge, and ran into the cottage, where she found Mrs Laidlaw in the passage, with eager eyes, but labouring under powerful self-restraint.

"Mother!" exclaimed Susy, flinging her arms round the stout old woman's neck.

"Eh!--my bonnie wee doo!" said Mrs Laidlaw, as she looked kindly down on the little head and stroked the fair hair with her toil-worn hands, while a venerable old man stood beside her, looking somewhat imbecile, and blowing his nose.

Just then the carriage rolled up to the door, and Mrs Laidlaw, leaving her "auld man" for a few minutes to do the honours of the house, retired to her chamber, and there on her knees confessed, thankfully, that she, like her son, had been effectually conquered by a "waux doll!"

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Reader, what more can we say? Is it necessary to add that, the two principals in the business being well pleased, everybody else was satisfied? We think not. But it may not be uninteresting to state that, from that auspicious day, a regular system of annual visitation was established between Bawbylon and the Braes of Yarrow, which held good for many a year; one peculiarity of the visitation being that the Bawbylonians and their progeny revelled on the braes chiefly in summer, while the Yarrowites, with their bairns, always took their southern flight in winter. Thus our two old women, Mrs Laidlaw and chimney-pot Liz--who fought rather shy of each other at first, but became mutual admirers at last--led, as it were, a triple life; now on the sunny slopes and amid the sweet influences of the braes, anon in the smoke and the unsavoury odours of the slums, and sometimes amid the refinements and luxury of the "West End," in all of which situations they were fain to confess that "the ways of God are wonderful and past finding out."

Of course David Laidlaw did not fail to redeem his promise to revisit the thieves' den, and many a man and youth was he the means of plucking from the jaws of spiritual death during his occasional and frequent visits to London--in which work he was ably seconded by Tommy Splint, when that volatile spirit grew up to manhood. And among their coadjutors none were more helpful in the work of bringing souls to Christ than Mrs Rampy and her bosom-friend Mrs Blathers.

Strange to say, Liz came to her end in a garret after all. On a raw November day she went, under the care of Susy, to visit an old friend near Cherub Court, in a garret not very unlike her old home. While there she was struck down. There was no pain--apparently no disease; simply a sudden sinking of the vital powers. They laid the dear old woman on her friend's bed, and in half-an-hour she had passed away, while the faithful Susy held her hand and whispered words from the Master in her ear. Thus old Liz, having finished her grand work on earth, was transplanted from the Garret in the slums to the Garden of the Lord.

THE END.
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Publication Date: 07-06-2010

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