Geordie's Tryst Part 6

Mrs. Foster glanced musingly across the knolls at Elsie's slender figure, as she sauntered peacefully home with her charge, and then she said, "No, my dear, we shall not trouble Elsie to-night; but I shall take you with me to see her in her own home to-morrow, if you wish it. I shall be going there."

The cold, grey light was beginning to steal over the woods of Kirklands, and the rosy tints that still hovered about the knolls would soon give place to the gloom of night, so Grace gathered her little party, and turned her steps towards the river.

The merry voices, hushed for a time, began again to resound through the still evening air, and the children went hurrying on with Jean, who had told them she must be going home to see after the milking of her cows, and cordially responded to their wish to join her at the process.

So Grace had been following slowly, and when she crossed the stepping-stones, she looked lingeringly back, for, with the sound of the rippling water had come the remembered echoes of Geordie's voice as she heard it first. Then she called to mind the chilly spring day when she had started on the search, p.r.o.nounced so hopeless by old Adam the gardener, and how gleefully she hailed the unexpected appearance of the little herd-boy. She smiled as she remembered the childish eagerness that made her fear that he would not appear at Kirklands, as he had promised, and his rather reproachful reply that he "Aye keepit his trysts." And then there rose mingled memories of those trysts, which be had so faithfully kept in the little still-room, of her own childish incapacity for the work she had so longed to do, and of the sense of failure that hung over it so long.

And as she turned to follow her merry boys, who were clambering up the mossy bank, where the silvery bark of the old birch-trees were still streaked with rosy sunset hues, she felt how much she had learnt from the tender, earnest heart of Geordie.

"And comforted, she praised the grace Which him had led to be, An early seeker of that Face Which he should early see."