Kenneth McAlpine Part 8

Archie was simply afraid of her. Kenneth got on better, however. He answered all her innocent but pointed questions, as if he were talking to his grandmother. But Jessie was really asking for information, and Kenneth knew it, so the two had quite a serious old-fas.h.i.+oned conversation.

Well, Kenneth seemed a gentleman born. He sat easily in his chair, he held his cap easily, and behaved himself with polite _sang froid_. Miss Grant was proud of Kenneth.

But poor Archie looked ill at ease.

Kenneth told Jessie the story of the little black rabbit, and Jessie was much interested.

"What did it look like?" she asked.

Kenneth glanced towards Archie.

"He just looked," he answered, "as Archie is looking now, as if waiting a chance to bolt."

This was a very mischievous speech, but Kenneth could not refrain from saying what he thought.

"Poor boy?" said Jessie, as if she had been Archie's mother; "he appears to be very frightened. What beautiful hair he has! It is just like mine."

This was true, only Jesssie's was longer and not bleached. Kenneth sat looking half wonderingly at Jessie, longer than politeness would dictate.

"What are you thinking about?" said Jessie.

"I was thinking," said Kenneth, candidly, "I'd give all the world to be able to talk English in the pretty way you do."

"Some day," Jessie said to her governess, "we will go and see the sheep, Miss Gale. Remember that place. Put it down in your notes. We are to see a fairy knoll and a smugglers' cave. It will be so delightful."

"We go to London soon for the winter," said Miss Gale, "but will come and see you, Kenneth, in spring or summer."

"Miss Gale," insisted the imperious Jessie, "I haven't seen you use your tablets."

So Miss Gale smilingly took her tablets out and noted the engagement to visit the sheep and see the fairy knoll.

"He has a flute," said Archie, with sudden determination not to sit mute all the time; "make him play."

And Kenneth had to play, just the same old melodies that the Scotch so dearly love; but as he played there came so sweet and sad an expression into English Jessie's face, that Kenneth would have played for hours to please her.

When he had done, she went and looked at Miss Gale's tablets.

"Thank you," she said, "dear Miss Gale, but just under there write, 'Flute.'"

So the word "Flute" was added. It was something for the child to think about while in London, a treat to look forward to, a long summer's day to be spent among the heather, among the sheep, a fairy glen, a real fairy knoll, and dreamy music from a flute.

No sooner was Archie round the corner of the hedge and out of sight of the parson's window, than he gave a wild whoop, like an Apache Indian, and ran off.

Kenneth came up with him before long. Not quite up with him, though, because Archie was high, high up in the sky, at an old magpie's nest.

The magpie was done with it, and Archie was tearing it down.

"The nasty old chick-chicking thing!" he explained to Kenneth; "for two years running she has used the same old nest, and it wasna hers to begin wi', but a hoody-craw's."

Away went the boys together. They had a long day before them, and meant to make use of it. They were as happy as boys could be who could do as they pleased and go where they pleased, and had bread and cheese to eat when hungry.

Very practical naturalists were Kenneth and Archie. They knew nothing whatever of nomenclature, they could not have told you the Latin name of any of the hundred and one strange wild creatures they met every day in their wanderings over mountain and moorland, but about the habits of those creatures there was nothing they could not have told you.

They could have led you to the home of the red deer and moor-c.o.c.k. They knew the tricks and the manners of every bird that built in hedgerow or furze bush, in thicket of spruce or pine-top or larch, in the hay or the heather or the growing corn, among sedges by the sides of lonely lochs or tarns, in banks or holes by the side of the stream, in hillock or stony cairn, or far up the mountain's side almost at the snow line itself.

They knew every bird by its name (in Scotch), by its eggs, by its nest, either in shape or in lining, and they knew where to look for every nest.

Remember this, and I'm proud to mention it, these boys never destroyed a nest nor an egg.

They knew all about animals that couldn't fly also, and oh! their name is legion. They knew or could pretty well guess, when they came across any of these, what the particular little animal, whether field-mouse, squirrel, polecat, or vole, was about, and what it was after, whether food for the young at home, or a warm bit of moss for extra comfort in the nest, or twigs, rushes, dry weeds, or hay for building purposes.

There was no deceiving Kenneth or Archie, nor Kooran and Shot, for the matter of that. But the wild creatures knew the boys, and often objected to have their nests examined, and even tried to deceive them.

For example, the hedgehog one evening in the gloaming was caught in the very act of hauling away an immensely long earthworm. The hoggie didn't curl up, but sat down and made pretence to eat it. But Archie knew the nest was not far away.

The fox had a home in the middle of the pine wood and had young there, and do what she would, the old mother fox could not get the puppies to keep to the hole and lie in bed all day. They would come out and play and tumble in the clearing, in such a funny ridiculous way. Once Archie was coming up towards this clearing, and the puppies were all out, for father fox was from home looking after chickens, and as soon as mother fox carried one into the hole in her mouth and went back for another, it came laughing and frolicking out again. So half distracted the mother went slily to meet Archie, and pretended she was nearly dead, and went away in a different direction from the clearing, and dragged one leg behind her in a way that made Archie certain he could catch her. Of course when mother fox had Archie far enough away she disappeared. But Archie came back next night, and the same trick did not succeed again, so he found the puppy foxes and used to play with them for hours at a time in the clearing.

The lapwings have a trick in spring-time of pretending they have a broken wing when you go near the nest. They fall down in front of you, and pretend they can't get away fast, and you run to catch them and forget all about the nest. This is a very clever trick, and has deceived many, but Archie used to shake his yellow hair and laugh at the lapwing.

"It is too thin," Archie would say. "I'm not a town's boy."

And he would go straight away and find the nest, with the buff and black speckled eggs, on the top of the bare sunny hillock where in a hole--not worth the name of nest--lappie had laid them.

It was too late in the season now to look for birds' nests, but they saw to-day a lot of old nests that they had not found the summer before, for the trees were now getting bare and thin in foliage.

When tired roaming about in the wilds, the two boys sat down and had dinner.

Then they crossed the wide moorland to Nancy's lonely cottage.

Nancy was delighted to see them. She said they must be hungry. But the boys a.s.sured her that they were not, because they had had plenty of bread and cheese. But Nancy put down her knitting and warmed some heather ale for them, and sweetened it, and switched two new-laid eggs, and mixed those in it, and made the boys drink the harmless and delicious beverage.

Then she took up her knitting again, and click, click, clickety-click, went the wires the while she told them strange old-world stories and tales of fairies and kelpies.

The boys were entranced, and it was nearly dark when they left Nancy's cottage and betook themselves to the glen. Kooran was very pleased to see them back, and helped them to fold the sheep; then the whole four-- that is, Kenneth and Archie and Kooran and Shot--went up the fairy glen to the fairy knoll and the smugglers' cave.

Kenneth lit the lamp; then he lit a fire out of doors and hung over a pot from a tripod, quite gipsy fas.h.i.+on.

Kenneth was a capital cook, and made a rabbit stew that a king might have eaten. So both boys supped royally, and the dogs had the bones.

Then the things were cleared away, and down lay Archie on the dais, to listen to Kenneth reading the "Tales of the Borders."

On the whole, they had spent a most delightful day of it. But it was only one of many, for Sat.u.r.day was Kenneth's own day, and Archie was his constant companion.

And so the autumn wore away among these, peaceful glens. The days grew shorter and shorter, the frosts fell morning and night, and winds moaned through trees leafless and bare. The sheep were folded now in fields on the lower lands, and Kenneth had more time for his studies. But every evening found Archie and him in their cave in the fairy knoll.

CHAPTER SIX.

KENNETH.

Scene: Glen Alva in a winter garb. A morning in December. A glorious morning and yet how great a change from the day before. For on the west coast of Scotland changes do come soon and sudden.