Geordies Tryst

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Geordie's Tryst

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Title: Geordie's Tryst A Tale of Scottish Life
Author: Mrs. Milne Rae
Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12765]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TRYST ***

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GEORDIE'S TRYST.
A TALE OF SCOTTISH LIFE.

[Attributed to Mrs. Milne Rae]
[Illustration: GEORDIE'S HERDING ENDED.]
GEORDIE'S TRYST.
CHAPTER I.
GRACE CAMPBELL.
[Illustration]
It was a chilly Scotch spring day. The afternoon sun glistened with
fitful, feeble rays on the windows of the old house of Kirklands, and
unpleasant little gusts of east wind came eddying round its ancient
gables, and sweeping along its broad walks and shrubberies, sending a
chill to the hearts of all the young green things that were struggling into
life.
On the time-worn steps of the grey mansion there stood a girl, cloaked
and bonneted for a walk, notwithstanding the uninviting weather.
"It's a fule's errand, I assure ye, Miss Grace, and on such an afternoon,
too. I've been askin' at old Adam the gardener, and he says there isna
one o' the kind left worth mindin' in all the valley o' Kirklands. So do
not go wanderin' on such an errand in this bitter wind, missy."
The speaker was an old woman, standing in the doorway, glancing with
an expression of kindly anxiety towards the girl, who leant on one of
the carved griffins of the old stone railing.
Grace had been looking at the speaker with troubled eyes as she
listened to her remonstrance, and now she said, meditatively, "Does old
Adam really say so, Margery?" Then with a quick gesture she turned to
go down the steps, adding cheerily, "Well, there's no harm in trying,
and as for the wind, that doesn't matter a bit. It's what Walter would call
a nice breezy day. I'm really going, nursie. Shut the door, and keep
your old self warm. I shall be home again by the time aunt has finished

her afternoon's sleep." And Grace turned quickly away, not in the
direction of the sheltered elm avenue, but across the park, by the path
which led most quickly beyond the grounds. Presently she slackened
her pace, and turning for a moment she glanced rather ruefully towards
the high walls of the old garden, as if prudence dictated that she should
seek fuller information there, before she set out on this search, which
she had planned that afternoon. The old nurse's words on the subject
seemed to have sent a chilling gust to her heart, harder to bear than the
bitter spring wind. Old Adam certainly knew the countryside better
than anybody else, she pondered, and he seemed to have given it as his
decision that she would not find her search successful.
Was it a rare plant growing in the valley that Grace was in search of?
Then, surely, the gardener was right; she should wait till the warm
sunshine came, and the south winds wafted sweet scents about, leading
to where the pleasant flowers grow among the cozy moss. Or did she
mean to go to the green velvety haughs of the winding river to get her
fishing-rod and tackle into working order at the little boat-house, and
try to tempt some unwary trout to eat his last supper, as she and her
brother Walter used to do in sunny summer evenings long ago?
These had been very pleasant days, and their lingering memories came
hovering round Grace as she stood once again among the familiar
haunts, after an absence of years. Echoes of merry ringing tones, in
which her own mingled, seemed to resound through the wooded paths,
where only the parching wind whistled shrilly to-day, and a boyish
voice seemed still to call impatiently under the lozenge-paned window
of the old school-room, "Gracie, Gracie, are you not done with lessons
yet? Do come out and play." And how dreary "Noel and Chapsal" used
to grow all of a sudden when that invitation came, and with what
relentless slowness the hands of the old clock dragged through the
lesson-hour still to run.
But the quaint old window has the shutters on it now, and the eager
face that used to seek his caged playmate through its bars is looking out
on new lands from his wandering home at sea. The little girl, too, who
used to