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So Miss Campbell and her pupil got on very well together indeed; and many a delightful walk, ay, and run too, they had in the forest. They were a trio-now, because Eily always made one of the number. She went to school as well as Harry, and if she did not learn anything, at all events she lay still and listened, and that is more than every dog would have done.
Harry introduced his “Guvie,” as he called her, to his pet toad, which she pretended to admire, but was secretly somewhat afraid of.
“John told me, Guvie,” he said one day, “that toadie would go to sleep all winter, so I’m going to put a biscuit in his box for his breakfast when he wakes, then we won’t go near him till spring-time comes.”
They say the child is the father of the man. I believe there is much truth in the statement, so that, in describing Harry’s character as a young boy, I am saving myself the trouble of doing so when he is very much older, and mingling in wilder life.
He was impulsive then and brave, fond to some extent of mischief of a mild, kind nature, but he was tender-hearted. One day in the forest he came to the foot of a great Scotch fir-tree.
“There is an old nest up there, Guvie. I’m off up.”
She would have held him, but he was far beyond her reach ere she could do so. He stopped when about ten feet above her.
“I knew, Guvie,” he cried, with a roguish smile on his countenance, “that you would try to catch me if you could. Now come, Guvie, catch me now, if you can.”
“Oh! do come down, Harry dear,” the poor girl exclaimed. “You frighten me nearly to death.”
“Don’t die, Guvie dear, there’s a good Guvie; I’m only going to the top of the tree, to the very top you know, no farther, to pull down the old nest, else the nasty lazy magpie will lay in it again next year, and not build a new one at all.”
“Do, Harry, come down,” cried Miss Campbell, “and I’ll give you anything.”
“No, no, Guvie; papa always says, ‘Do your duty, Harold boy, always do your duty.’ I’m going to do what papa bids me. Good-bye, Guvie, I’ll soon be back.”
And away he went. It seemed, several times ere he reached the top, that he would be back far sooner than even he himself expected, for little branches often gave way with a crack that sent a thrill of horror through Miss Campbell’s heart.
“Oh! what if he should fall and be killed,” she thought.
But presently Harry was high high up on the very point of the tree. He proceeded at once to throw down the great nest of sticks and grass and clay; no very easy task, as he had to work with one hand, while he held on with the other.
But he finished at last, and the nest lay at Miss Campbell’s feet.
The wind blew high to-day, and the tree swayed and swayed about, just like a ship’s mast at sea.
“Oh! Miss Guvie, do try to come up,” cried the boy, looking down. “It is so nice; and I can see all over the country. Wouldn’t I like to be a sailor. Do come up.”
But Miss Campbell only cried, “Do come down.”
When he did obey her at last, she could contain herself no longer. Down she must sit on a bank of withered pine-needles and give vent to sobs and tears.
Then the boy’s heart melted for her, and he went and threw his arms around her and kissed her, and said:
“Oh! Guvie dear, don’t cry, and Harry will never, never be quite so naughty again. Don’t cry, dear, and when Harry grows a big man, he will fight for you and then marry you.”
She was pacified at last, and they started for home.
“I’ll keep firm hold of your hand,” said Harry, “and then you won’t cry any more, and nothing can hurt you.”
“We’ll both want brushing, won’t we, Harry?” she said, smiling.
It was true. For Harry’s jacket was altogether green, with the mould from the tree, and he had transferred a goodly portion of it to her velveteen jacket, while hugging her.
“Ha!” laughed Harry; “we are both foresters now, Guvie. What fun! All green, green, green.”
But Harry had given his governess a terrible fright, and she tried to make him promise that he would not climb trees again.
The boy held his wise, wee head to one side for a few seconds and considered.
“That wouldn’t do, Guvie,” he said. “But when I go up a tree you shall come with me. There now!”
“But, dear child, I cannot climb trees.”
“You could a beech?” quoth Harry.
“Well, I might a beech, a little way.”
“If you don’t climb a beech, I shall go a mile high up into a fir,” said the young rascal.
So poor Miss Campbell had to consent, and in the depth of the forest where many lordly beeches grew, “Guvie” took lessons in climbing.
It certainly is no difficult operation for even a girl to get out on to the arm of a beech tree. One could almost walk there, and the branches are as clean as a table.
The governess was further commanded by her lord and pupil to take books with her up into the trees and read to him.
When summer came, and the beech trees were one mass of tender green leaves, with the bees all singing their songs, as they flew from flower to flower, it was far from unpleasant to get up into leafland, and while away an hour or longer with a delightful book.
Sometimes indeed they went high enough to let a branch shut out the view of the earth entirely, and then it was like being in fairyland.
One beautiful evening in the latter end of June Miss Campbell and he went out for a stroll as usual.
Eily did not follow them. Truth to say, Harry had shut her up in the saddle-room.
There was much to be seen and noticed, and oceans of wild flowers to cull, and there were birds’ nests to be visited, many of which contained only eggs, while others had in them little half-naked, hairy “gorbals,” that opened such extraordinary big gaping yellow mouths, that they could have swallowed a church – that is, if the church were small enough.
There grew not far from the five-barred gate, mentioned in last chapter, an immensely large and beautiful beech tree; and it had its branches close to the ground, so that it presented no great difficulty to get up into it.
Miss Campbell had never been this way before, but to-night her guide led her hither, under pretence of showing her a tree with a hawk’s nest in it.
The hawk’s nest was up there in the pine tree-top right enough, and it was not an old one either, for when Harry kicked the tree and cried “Hush-oo-oo!” out and away flew the beautiful and graceful bird. Then they came to the beech tree.
“Let us get up here and read,” said Harry; “the sun isn’t thinking of going down yet. I don’t think the sun is moving a bit. I don’t suppose he knows what o’clock it is.”
As soon as they were safely and securely seated, and Miss Campbell had read a short but stirring story to her pupil, Harry pulled aside a branch.
“Do you see that grass field?” he asked.
“Yes, dear.”
“Well, do you know who lives there?”
“No, Harry.”
“Towsie.”
“And who is Towsie?”
“Why, silly Guvie, Towsie is Towsie, of course; Towsie is his Christian name; Jock, I suppose, is his papa’s name. Towsie Jock, there now!”
“What nonsense are you talking, dear?” said Miss Campbell.
“Why, telling you about Towsie Jock, to be sure. Towsie Jock is so funny, and what faces he makes when I make faces at him! Mind you, Guvie, I don’t think he quite likes to be called Towsie Jock. And I wouldn’t either, would you, dear Guvie?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea, Harry, what it is all about, nor who or what Towsie Jock, as you call him, or it, is.”
“Oh, haven’t you, Guvie? Well, you shall see. Mind you it isn’t a hedgehog. Something, oh, ever so much bigger.”
As he spoke Harry slipped like an eel down from the tree. He accomplished this by sliding out to the tip of the branch, out and out till it bent with his light weight, and dropped him on the ground.
Harry went straight to the gate, the top bar of which he had previously, in one of his lonely rambles, taken the precaution to tie down. He looked now to see that the fastening was all secure, then commenced to shout.
“Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”
Jock was at a distant corner of the field, his favourite corner, on high ground, where he could see the country for miles around. He was standing there chewing his cud and looking at the sky. Perhaps he was wondering what kind of a day it was to be to-morrow.
Suddenly he thrust one ear back to listen.
“Towsie! Towsie!” came the shout in shrill treble.
“It is that monkey again,” said Towsie, to himself. “If I can only pin one horn through him, I’ll carry him all round and round the field, at the gallop too.”
Miss Campbell, from the tree, first heard a dreadful bellowing roar, which ended in one continuous stream of hoarse explosions, as it were.
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow,” and next moment, to her horror, she saw a gigantic horrid homed bull coming tearing towards the gate, his nose on the ground, and his tail like a corkscrew over his back.
“Harry, Harry!” she screamed. “Oh! fly, Harry, fly!”
“He can’t get over, Guvie,” cried Harry, coolly. “Let me introduce you, as papa says. That is Towsie Jock. Towsie! Towsie! Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock!”
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”
On came the bull as mad as ever bull was.
Miss Campbell shouted again, and screamed with terror.
“Harry, come, oh, dear Harry, come up. For my sake then.”
“But he can’t get over, I tell you, Guvie.”
“But I’m fainting, Harry.”
“Oh, in that case I’ll come, Guvie. Papa says, ‘Always, whatever you do, Harry, be kind and polite to ladies.’ I’m coming, Guvie. Don’t fall till I get hold of you.”
And none too soon.
“Wow-ow —woa!”
Next moment the gate flew in splinters with the awful charge of that Highland bull.
Miss Campbell’s head swam, but she clutched the rash boy to her breast, and thanked God he was saved.
Meanwhile the bull was at the foot of the tree. He first commenced an attack upon it with head and horns; every time, he battered it he shook it to its uttermost twig and leaf. But Miss Campbell and Harry had a safe seat in a strong niche between two great branches, with another branch to sit on and one behind.
At every blow the bull reeled back again.
The governess was white and trembling.
Harry was as cool as a hero.
He looked down and enjoyed the performance.
“Isn’t he naughty and wicked!” he said.
“Won’t he have a headache in the morning, Guvie!”
While attacking and battering the tree, Towsie Jock was silent, only the noise of the “thuds” resounded through the forest.
“If I had a big turnip now,” said the boy, “to throw down, Towsie would eat it and go away, oh! so well pleased, and not naughty at all.”
Towsie soon saw that to knock down that sturdy old beech was impossible; he commenced, therefore, with angry bellowings to root round it with his feet.
But even of this he soon tired. He stood up, red-eyed and furious-looking, and sniffed and snorted.
“May I cry ‘Towsie’ again, Guvie?”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
“He can’t climb the tree, you know. He’ll go away presently, then we can get down and run, Guvie dear.”
But Towsie had evidently no such intentions. He stood there for quite half an hour, then he began to chew his cud again. That was a pacific sign, and Miss Campbell gave a sigh of relief.
Towsie Jock was a good general. He had tried and tried in vain to storm the citadel, that is, the tree; he had tried to batter it down, and he had tried to undermine it; now the only thing to do was simply to lay siege to it.
And this he did by quietly lying down.
Meanwhile, far away in the east, they could see, through the greenery of the branches, red or crimson streaky clouds, and they knew that gloaming was falling, and that gloaming would soon be followed by night.
The red clouds grew a lurid purple, then grey, then seemed to melt away, and only a gleam of light remained in the west. That also faded, and next a bright, bright star peeped in through the leaves at them, and all grew gloomy around.
Still the bull lay still.
