For, whatever repose there may be in country life—­real country—­ there is certainly no monotony.  The perpetual change of seasons, varying the aspect of the outside world every month, every week—­nay, almost every day, is a continual interest to observant minds, and especially so to intelligent children, who are as yet lying on the breast of Mother Nature only, nor have begun to feel or understand the darker and sadder interests of human passion and emotion.

The little Earl of Cairnforth was one of these; and many a time, through all the summers of his life; he recalled tenderly that first summer at Cairnforth, when, no longer pent up between walls and roofs, or dragged about in carriages, he learned, by Molcolm’s aid and under Helen’s teaching, to chronicle time in different ways; first by the hyacinths and primroses vanishing, and giving place to the wild roses—­those exquisite deep-red roses which belong especially to this country-side; then by the woods—­his own woods—­growing fragrant with innumerable honeysuckles; and lastly by the heather on the moorland—­ Scotland’s own flower—­which clothes entire hillsides as with a garment of gorgeous purple, and fills the whole atmosphere with the scent of a spice-garden; and when it faded into a soft brown, dying delicately, beautiful to the last, there appeared the brambles, trailing every where, with their pretty yellowing leaves and their delicious berries.  How blithe, even like a mere “callant,” big Malcolm was, when, leaving the earl on the sunny hill-side under Miss Cardross’s charge, he used to wander off, and come back with his hands all torn and scratched, to feed his young master with blackberries!

“He is not unhappy—­I am sure the child is not unhappy,” Helen often said to her father, when—­as was his way—­Mr. Cardross would get fits of uncertainty and downheartedness, and think he was killing his pupil with study, or wearying him, and risking his health by letting him do as much as his energetic mind, always dominant over the frail body, prompted him to do.  “Only let him love his life, and put as much in it as he can, be it long or short, and then it will never be a sad life or a life thrown away.”

“Helen, you’re not clever, but you’re a wise little woman, my dear,” the minister would say, patting the flaxen curls or the busy hands—­large and brown, yet with a certain grace about them, too—­helpful hands, made to hold children, or tend sick folk, or sustain the feeble steps of old age.  She was “no bonnie” Helen Cardross; it was just a round, rosy, sonsie face, with no features in particular, but she was pleasant to look upon, and inexpressibly pleasant to live with; for it was such a wholesome nature, so entirely free from moods, or fancies, or crochets of any kind—­those sad vagaries of ill-health, ill-humor, and ill-conditionedness of every sort, which are sometimes only a misfortune, caused by an unhappy natural temperament, but oftener arise from pure egotism, of which there was not an atom in Helen Cardross.  Her life was like the life of a flower—­as natural, unconscious, fresh, and sweet:  she took in every influence about her, and gave out freely all she had to give; desired no better things than she possessed, and where she was planted there she grew.