The girl's own book of health and beauty / [Gordon Stables].

  • William Gordon Stables
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The girl's own book of health and beauty / [Gordon Stables]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the tender green of the feathery larch, and begirt wi’ bands o’ yellow broom and gowden furze, there stood my father’s humble cot. And every night of my happy young life I used to be lulled to sleep by a sound like waves breaking on a shingly beach; for, if it wasn’t the wind whispering and moaning through the trees, it was the incessant hurtle o’ the Don rushing on over the pebbles and boulders. So near were we to the river that dear Johnnie could throw a stone right over it. A strong, strong arm had Johnnie. Johnnie was my only brother, and I never had a sister. My mother died when Johnnie and I were so young, that neither of us could remember her, and Grannie kept my father’s house. Dear auld Grannie, with her clear, caller, canty face and her busy, happy ways, it is years ago since she has gone to her lang hame in the auld kirkyard. She aye had a pleasant smile for Johnnie and me, and the old- world stories she used to tell us in the long forenights o’ winter, I’m sure would have delighted the reader of even so braw a magazine as Home Chimes. Home Chimes ? well, Grannie’s voice was home chimes to us. Imagine us, if you can, gathered round that Scottish country fireside, a great fire of peats and wood is blazing and crackling on the hearth—there is no other light. At one corner sits my father in an easy chair, his day’s toil is past, and his pipe is alight; at the other is auld Grannie, and click, click, click, click, go her knitting wires as she tells her tale. Johnnie and I complete the circle; our eyes are riveted on Grannie’s face. The smoke goes curling up the wide chimney, the blaze sometimes following yards high, the wind without is roaring and whistling round the house, shaking doors and dindling windows; but it makes us feel all the snugger within. I just creep closer to Johnnie, lean my head on his shoulder, and listen. By-and-bye Grannie stops speaking, and for a while the
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