Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy. Stables Gordon
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Harry was too quick for him, and what followed spoke well for the presence of mind of our young hero.
To have attempted to run straight away from the bull would have meant a speedy and terrible death. He would have been torn limb from limb. But no sooner did the bar rattle down, than both Harry and Eily sprang to the stone fence and jumped over into the field, just as the bull jumped out of it.
Jock was considerably nonplussed at not finding his tormentor where he had expected to.
“Towsie! Towsie!” cried Harry, and the bull leapt back into the field, and Harry and Eily scrambled out of it. This game was kept up for some time, a sort of wild hide-and-seek, much to Harry’s delight; but each time he leapt the wall he edged farther and farther from the gate.
The bull got quieter now and kept inside the field, and pretended to browse, though I do not think he swallowed much. He followed along the stone fence all the same, but Harry knew he could not leap it. In the adjoining field, which belonged to Harry’s father, great turnips grew, and Harry went and pulled two of the very biggest, and threw over the wall to the bull.
“Poor Jock!” said the boy, “I didn’t mean to vex you.”
Jock eyed him a moment as if he did not know what to make of it all, then began quietly to munch the turnips.
And Harry stole back and put up the top bar of the gate.
Meanwhile the rain continued unremittingly, but being wet to the skin, Harry could not well be wetter, and that is how he consoled himself. The afternoon was already far spent, by and by it would be dark, so he prepared to hurry home now.
He knew his way through the forest, but there were many attractions – a wild bee-hive for instance in a bank. He must stop and beat the ground above it, then bend his ear down to hear the bees buzz, till at last one was sent out to see what the matter was and whether or not the end of the world had come.
A hole where he knew a weasel lived; he would have liked to have seen it, only it would not come out. Rabbit’s holes, that he crept towards on hands and knees, and laughed to see the bunnies scurry away. A deep water-pit where queer old-fashioned water-rats (voles) lived, some of whom came out to look at him and squeezed their eyes to clear their sight. And so on and so forth. It was quite gloaming before he got near the lawn gate; and then, when he did find his way inside among the shrubbery, he found the sparrows were just going to bed, and bickering and squabbling at a terrible rate, about who should have the dry boughs of the pines, and who should not.
Meanwhile he was missed. He was often missed for the matter of that, but he had seldom been so long away on such a night.
His father was an easy-minded farmer, who tilled his own acres; he was reading the newspaper in an easy chair, and his mother, a delicate, somewhat nervous, lady, was sewing near the window.
When the evening shadows began to fall, the nurse tapped at the room door and entered. “Has Harry been here, mum?”
“No, Lizzie; don’t you know where he is?”
“Haven’t seen him for hours, mum. I made sure he was here.”
“Oh! you silly child, to let him out of your sight like that. Go and look for him at once.”
“Where is the child, I wonder,” she continued, addressing her husband. “Where can Harold be?”
“Mm? what?” said Harry’s father, looking lazily over his newspaper. “Child Harold? Gone on a pilgrimage perhaps.”
“Oh! don’t be foolish,” said his wife, petulantly. “Well, my dear, how should I know. Very likely he is up in the dusty attic squatting among the cobwebs, or rummaging for curiosities in some old drawer or another.”
But Harry was not upstairs among the cobwebs, nor rummaging in any drawer whatever, nor talking to John in the stable, nor playing with his toys in the loft, nor anywhere else that any one could think of.
So there was a pretty to do.
But in the midst of it all, lo! Eily and Harry both presented themselves at the hall door, and you could not have said which of the two was in the most miserable plight. Both were so wet and so bedraggled.
“Oh! please, dear mamma,” said Harry, “I’m so hungry and so is poor Eily.”
His mother was too happy to scold him, and his father laughed heartily at the whole affair. For Harry had neither sisters nor brothers.
While the boy was being stripped and re-dressed in dry clothes, the dog threw herself in front of the kitchen fife.
Presently they both had supper. If Harry was pale while playing at bubble-ships in the water-vat, he was rosy enough now, and verily his cheeks shone in the lamplight.
Before he knelt down that night by his mother’s knee to say his prayers, she asked him if he had done much wrong to-day.
“Oh! yes, dear mamma,” was the reply, “I did tease Towsie so.”
Book One – Chapter Two.
Adventures in the Forest
At breakfast next morning young Harry was much surprised and concerned to be told that he was going to have a governess.
“A guv’niss,” he said, pausing in the act of raising a spoonful of oatmeal porridge to his mouth, “a guv’niss, papa? What’s a guv’niss? Something to eat?”
“No, child; a governess is a lady, who will do the duties of a teacher to you, learn you your lessons and – ”
“Mamma can do that.”
“And give you sums to do.”
“Ma does all that, papa.”
“And go with you wherever you go.”
Harry leant his chin upon his hand thoughtfully for a moment or two; then he said:
“Mm, will the guv’niss go high up the trees with me, papa, and will she make faces at Towsie?”
“I don’t think so, Harold.”
“I don’t want the old lady,” said Harry.
“Your leave will not be asked, my dear boy.”
“Then,” said Harry, in as determined a voice as he could command, “I shall hate her, and beat her, and bite her.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr Milvaine, turning to his wife, “that you spoil that child.”
“I’m afraid,” returned Mrs Milvaine mildly, “I have received assistance from you.”
Harry’s governess came in a week. It was surely a sad look-out for her, if she was to be hated and beaten and bitten.
She was not a prim, angular, starchy, “tawsey”-looking old maid by any means. At most she had seen but nineteen summers; fresh in face, blue-eyed, dimpled, and with beautiful hair.
Harry soon took to her.
“I sha’n’t beat you,” he said, “as long as you’re good.”
The attic was cleared of cobwebs and rubbish, and turned into a schoolroom, and studies at regular hours of the day commenced forthwith.
Harry determined to make his own terms with his “guv’niss.” He would be good, and learn his lessons, and do his sums, and write his copy and all that, if she would read out of a book to him every day, and describe to him a scene in some far-off land.
She promised.
Before commencing lessons of a forenoon, Miss Campbell read a portion of one of the Gospels to him, and then she prayed. Miss Campbell was one of those girls who are not ashamed to pray, not ashamed to ask mercy, help and guidance from Him from whom all blessings flow. Before leaving school Miss Campbell took the Book again, but now no other portion would he allow her to read except the Revelations. There was a charm about these that never, never palled upon the child.
But always in the evenings “Guvie” had to devote