Geordies Tryst | Page 7

sister, Grace's mother, who used to know all the
dwellers in the valley so well that her white pony could calculate the
distance to the pleasant farmyard at which he would get his next
mouthful of crisp corn; or the muirland cottage, with its delicious bit of
turf, where he would presently graze, as he waited for his young
mistress, while she talked to the inmates. But if the little girl with her
white pony could have come back again to Kirklands, they would have
missed many a familiar face, and searched in vain for many a cottage.
The pleasant little thatched dwellings, with velvety tufts of moss
studding the roof, and pretty creepers climbing till they mingled with
the brown thatch, telling of the inmates' loving fingers, were all swept
away now, and in the place that once knew them, stretched trim drills
of turnips, fenced by grim stone walls, to which time had not yet given
a moss-covered beauty.
Mr. Graham had thought it wise for his client's interests to remove
those little "crofts," and merge their kailyards into productive fields; so
the dwellers in the greensward cottages had to wander townwards to
seek shelter and work in city courts and alleys. The land was now
divided into a few farms, on which stood imposing-looking houses,
with knockers and latch-keys to the doors, where the little girl and the
white pony would never have ventured to ask admittance, or cared to
gain it--where "nobody wanted nothin' from nobody," old Adam, the
gardener, had assured Margery, when she made anxious inquiries
concerning the prospect of Grace's search, and who hoped that this
circumstantial information might persuade her young mistress to
abandon it.
The prophecy that it was "a fule's errand" rang unpleasantly in Grace's
ear, as she crossed the park and climbed the rustic stiles which led to
the high road. It was true she knew that during the last three years there
had been many a "clearance" at Kirklands, for she remembered having

overheard Mr. Graham congratulating her aunt on the larger returns
owing to these improvements. But surely, she thought, there might still
be found some little cottages like those to which she heard her mamma
was so fond of going when she was a girl. Walter and she used
certainly, she remembered, often to see children with bare, dust-stained
feet on the road, when they happened to go beyond the grounds on a
fishing expedition, or down with their aunt through her lands; but her
brother had been an all-sufficient playmate, and Grace's interest in the
peasant children did not extend beyond a glance of curiosity. But now
how gladly would she gather a little company of them to tell them that
old sweet story, which had come to her own heart with such new
strange sweetness, during these winter days, though she had heard it
ever since she could remember. Grace hurried eagerly along the high
road, looking at every turn for traces of any lowly wayside dwellings.
There used to be a little clump of cottages here, she thought, as she
stopped at a bend of the road where there were traces of recent
demolitions, and a great field of green corn was evidently going to
reclaim the waste place, and presently swallow it up. Behind where the
vanished cottages had stood there stretched a glade of birch-trees, with
their low twisted stems rising from little knolls of turf so mossy and
steep, that the drills of turnips and potatoes could not possibly be
ranged there without destroying their symmetry, even though the
crooked birch-trees were to be swept away.
Grace wandered among the budding trees, and through the soft springy
turf that was growing green again in spite of the bitter spring winds, but
she found no little native lurking among the birches, and was
disappointed to come to the other side of the wood much more quickly
than she expected, without the _détour_ being of any practical use.
The turf sloped away to a little stream that went singing cheerily over
sparkling pebbles, bubbling and foaming round the base of grey
lichened rocks, that reared their heads above the water, as if in angry
remonstrance at their daring to interfere with its progress. On the
opposite bank there stretched a bit of muirland pasture, studded with
little knolls of heather, growing green, in preparation for its richer
autumn tints. The pale spring sunlight began to grow more mellow in

its light at this afternoon hour; it glinted on the little gurgling stream,
lighted up the feathery birch glade, and lay in golden patches on the
opposite bank, where Grace noticed some cattle begin to gather on the
heathery knolls, as if they had come to enjoy the last hour of bright
sunshine. Perhaps some