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But harken at him now.
“I don’t believe those were fairies,” Nettie says.
“So do you think they were his neighbors all the time?” says her father. “Do you think they were playing a trick on him?”
Never has Walter heard a father speak to a child so indulgently. And fond as he has grown of Nettie he ca
“No I do not,” she says.
“What then?” says her father.
“I think they were dead people.”
“What do you know about dead people?” her father asks her, finally speaking with some ster
“I was not making light,” says Nettie carelessly.
The sailors are scrambling loose from their sails and pointing at the sky, far to the west. They must see there something that excites them. Walter makes bold to ask, “Are they English? I ca
“Some of them are English, but from parts that sound foreign to us. Some are Portuguese. I ca
Walter believes that he too has very keen eyes, but it takes him a moment or two before he can see these birds, the ones that must be called rotches. Flocks and flocks of seabirds flashing and rising overhead, mere bright speckles on the air.
“You must make sure to mention those in your journal,” Nettie’s father says. “I have seen them when I made this voyage before. They feed on fish and here is the great place for them. Soon you’ll see the fishermen as well. But the rotches filling the sky are the very first sign that we must be on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
“You must come up and talk to us on the deck above,” he says, in bidding good-bye to Walter. “I have business to think about and I am not much company for my daughter. She is forbidden to run around because she is not quite recovered from the cold she had in the winter but she is fond of sitting and talking.”
“I don’t believe it is the rule for me to go there,” says Walter, in some confusion.
“No, no, that is no matter. My girl is lonely. She likes to read and draw but she likes company too. She could show you how to draw, if you like. That would add to your journal.”
If Walter flushes it is not noticed. Nettie remains quite composed.
So they sit out in the open and draw and write. Or she reads aloud to him from her favorite book, which is The Scottish Chiefs. He already knows much about what happens in the story-who does not know about William Wallace?-but she reads smoothly and at just the proper speed and makes some things solemn and others terrifying and something else comical, so that he is as much in thrall to the book as she is herself. Even though, as she says, she has read it twelve times already.
He understands a little better now why she has all those questions to ask him. He and his folk remind her of some people in her book. Such people as there were out on the hills and valleys in the olden times. What would she think if she knew that the old fellow, the old tale-spi
She would be delighted, probably, more curious about Walter’s family than ever. She would not look down on them, except in a way she could not help or know about.
We came on the fishing banks of Newfoundland on the 12th of July and on the 19th we saw land and it was a joyful sight to us. It was a part of Newfoundland. We sailed between Newfoundland and St. Paul’s Island and having a fair wind both the 18th and the 19th we found ourselves in the river on the morning of the 20th and within sight of the mainland of North America. We were awakened at about 1 o’clock in the morning and I think every passenger was out of bed at 4 o’clock gazing at the land, it being wholly covered with wood and quite a new sight to us. It was a part of Nova Scotia and a beautiful hilly country. We saw several whales this day such creatures as I never saw in my life.
This is the day of wonders. The land is covered with trees like a head with hair and behind the ship the sun rises tipping the top trees with light. The sky is clear and shining as a china plate and the water just playfully ruffled with wind. Every wisp of fog has gone and the air is full of the resinous smell of the trees. Seabirds are flashing above the sails all golden like creatures of Heaven, but the sailors raise a few shots to keep them from the rigging.
Mary holds Young James up so that he may always remember this first sight of the continent that will forever be his home. She tells him the name of this land-Nova Scotia.
“It means New Scotland,” she says.
Agnes hears her. “Then why doesn’t it say so?”
Mary says, “It’s Latin, I think.”
Agnes snorts with impatience. The baby has been waked up early by all the hubbub and celebration, and now she is miserable, wanting to be on the breast all the time, wailing whenever Agnes tries to take her off. Young James, observing all this closely, makes an attempt to get on the other breast, and Agnes bats him off so hard that he staggers.
“Suckie-laddie,” Agnes calls him. He yelps a bit, then crawls around behind her and pinches the baby’s toes.
Another whack.
“You’re a rotten egg, you are,” his mother says. “Somebody’s been spoiling you till you think you’re the Laird’s arse.”
Agnes’s roused voice always makes Mary feel as if she is about to catch a blow herself.
Old James is sitting with them on the deck, but pays no attention to this domestic unrest.
“Will you come and look at the country, Father?” says Mary uncertainly. “You can have a better view from the rail.”
“I can see it well enough,” Old James says. Nothing in his voice suggests that the revelations around them are pleasing to him.
“Ettrick was covered with trees in the old days,” he says. “The monks had it first and after that it was the royal forest. It was the King’s forest. Beech trees, oak trees, rowan trees.”
“As many trees as this?” says Mary, made bolder than usual by the novel splendors of the day.
“Better trees. Older. It was famous all over Scotland. The Royal Forest of Ettrick.”
“And Nova Scotia is where our brother James is,” Mary continues.
“He may be or he may not. It would be easy to die here and nobody know you were dead. Wild animals could have eaten him.”
“Come near this baby again and I’ll skin you alive,” says Agnes to Young James who is circling her and the baby, pretending that they hold no interest for him.
Agnes is thinking it would serve him right, the fellow who never even took his leave of her. But she has to hope he will show up sometime and see her married to his brother. So that he will wonder. Also he will understand that in the end he did not get the better of her.
Mary wonders how her father can talk in that way, about how wild animals could have eaten his own son. Is that how the sorrows of the years take hold on you, to turn your heart of flesh to a heart of stone, as it says in the old song? And if it is so, how carelessly and disdainfully might he talk about her, who never meant to him a fraction of what the boys did?
Somebody has brought a fiddle on to the deck and is tuning up to play. People who have been hanging onto the rail and pointing out to each other what any one of them could see on their own-likewise repeating the name that by now everyone knows, Nova Scotia-are distracted by these sounds and begin to call for dancing. They call out the names of the reels and dances they want the fiddler to play. Space is cleared and couples line up in some sort of order and after a lot of uneasy fiddle-scraping and impatient shouts of encouragement, the music comes through and gathers its authority and the dancing begins.