Geordies Tryst | Page 7

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 little cottages may be sheltered behind those hillocks, Grace thought; and she began to examine how the grey rocks lay among the water, and whether she could possibly find dry footing across the stream. Presently she came upon a smooth row of stones, that were evidently used as a thoroughfare. She had already begun to