more than once during the year
This cheered us a bit; but the wind sighed in the trees, the rain dripped on the window panes, and we felt for the first time a consciousness of home-longing. Francesca sat on a low stool, looking into the fire, Ronald’s last letter in her lap, and it was easy indeed to see that her heart was in the Highlands. She has been giving us a few extracts from the communication, an unusual proceeding, as Ronald, in his ordinary correspondence, is evidently not a quotable person. We smiled over his account of a visit to his old parish of Inchcaldy in Fifeshire. There is a certain large orphanage in the vicinity, in which we had all taken an interest, chiefly because our friends the Macraes of Pettybaw House were among its guardians.
It seems that Lady Rowardennan of the Castle had promised the orphans, en bloc, that those who passed through an entire year without once falling into falsehood should have a treat or festival of their own choosing. On the eventful day of decision, those orphans, male and female, who had not for a twelve-month deviated from the truth by a hair’s-breadth, raised their little white hands (emblematic of their pure hearts and lips), and were solemnly counted. Then came the unhappy moment when a scattering of small grimy paws was timidly put up, and their falsifying owners confessed that they had fibbed more than once during the year. These tearful fibbers were also counted, and sent from the room, while the non-fibbers chose their reward, which was to sail around the Bass Rock and the Isle of May in a steam tug.
On the festival day, the matron of the orphanage chanced on the happy thought that it might have a moral effect on the said fibbers to see the non-fibbers depart in a blaze of glory; so they were taken to the beach to watch the tug start on its voyage. The confessed criminals looked wretched enough, Ronald wrote, when forsaken by their virtuous playmates, who stepped jauntily on board, holding their sailor hats on their heads and carrying nice little luncheon baskets; so miserably unhappy, indeed, did they seem that certain sympathetic and ill-balanced persons sprang to their relief, providing them with sandwiches, sweeties, and pennies. It was a lovely day, and when the fibbers’ tears were dried they played merrily on the sand, their games directed and shared by the aforesaid misguided persons.
Meantime a high wind had sprung up at sea, and the tug was tossed to and fro upon the foamy deep. So many and so varied were the ills of the righteous orphans that the matron could not attend to all of them properly, and they were laid on benches or on the deck, where they languidly declined luncheon, and wept for a sight of the land. At five the tug steamed up to the home landing.
Processing your request, Please wait....
