The Story of the White-Rock Cove | Page 4

He's coming, and uncle and aunt

Gordon, on Thursday week; that's only just a fortnight, you know."
Aleck was my only boy cousin, and ever since there had been a notion
of his coming to Braycombe, I had been thinking and dreaming of him
incessantly. My aunt Gordon had been in very delicate health, and the
doctors ordered foreign air and constant change for the summer months,
and a winter in some warm climate. There had been some hesitation as
to how my cousin, their only child, should be disposed of. He was not
very strong, and school life, it was feared, might be too great an ordeal
for another year; so my parents had written, offering that he should
spend that time at Braycombe, and share my tutor's instructions. The
decisive answer from my uncle had only just arrived, and I was in a
tumult of joy and excitement that it was in favour of my cousin's
coming to stay with us, and that the actual day of our visitors' arrival
had been fixed.
George listened with every appearance of interest to my
communication.
"I'm glad your cousin's coming, Master Willie, as you're pleased," he
said.
"But aren't you glad, too, for your own sake?" I asked. "It will be so
nice having him to play with us."
"Oh, I'll be pleased to see him, never fear for that," responded George.
"I knew his father when he was but a little fellow like yourself."
"Mamma calls me her big boy," I threw in, disapprovingly. "But what
do you think Aleck will be like?"
"Well, sir, I should expect very much such another young craft as
yourself; or, now I come to think of it, perhaps a year older or so."
"Not a year," I replied; "ten months and a half. I asked mamma his
birth-day. Do you think he'll be as tall as me? because papa and
mamma say I'm tall for my age."

"His father stood six feet one the day he came of age. I daresay his son
will take after him," said George.
"And be as tall as that?" I inquired, feeling rather anxious, until
reassured, at the transformation of my cousin in prospect into a young
giant.
I suppose that few children had ever seen less of other children than I
had up to this time. There were but three gentlemen's houses in our
neighbourhood: the Rectory, where lived the elderly clergyman and his
wife, who had never had a family; the Elms, a country seat, where Sir
John and Lady Cosington and two grown-up daughters resided; and
Willowbank, another country place, occupied by a young married
couple, with one little baby. Elmworth, our nearest town, was seven
miles off; and this distance almost entirely precluded intercourse with
any of the families there.
In consequence of this, I had been completely without companions of
my own age up to this time. In books I had read much of children's
amusements with their companions; and although the perfect happiness
of my own home left nothing really to be wished for, if ever a wish did
occur to me for anything I had not, it was for a play-fellow and
companion somewhere about my own age; and now, when this wish of
mine was really on the eve of being realized, I was filled with vague
dreams and anticipations of all the delight which it was to bring to me.
When George and I had mutually agreed that my cousin
Aleck--allowing for the difference of age--might be reasonably
expected to be somewhat taller than myself, we sat down on the beach,
and began to discuss certain plans of mine for giving him a suitable
welcome.
Dim ideas, the result of "Illustrated London News'" pictures, were
floating in my mind--bouquets, triumphal arches, addresses, and so
forth--even although I wound up by saying--
"Of course, not like that exactly; only something--something rather
grand."

[Illustration: OLD GEORGE AND WILLIE.]
Old George, however, kindly and wisely pulled my schemes down, and
laid them affectionately in the dust:--
"You see, Master Willie, anything written, even in your best hand,
wouldn't come up to what you will say in the first five minutes by word
of mouth; and then the school banners, though very suitable for a
feast--and I'm sure my Susan would be right pleased to look them up
for you--would be no ways suitable. 'A merry Christmas and happy
New Year,' or, 'Braycombe Schools, founded 1830,' would look odd-like
flying in the avenue at this time of year. And though I'd be glad to do
anything to give you pleasure, I'd rather be opening the gate to your
uncle and aunt and cousin, as they drive up, than firing off a gun, which
might disturb their nerves, not to say frighten the horses."
All