branches are as clean as a table.
The governess was further commanded by her lord and pupil to take books with her up into the trees and read to him.
When summer came, and the beech trees were one mass of tender green leaves, with the bees all singing their songs, as they flew from flower to flower, it was far from unpleasant to get up into leafland, and while away an hour or longer with a delightful book.
Sometimes indeed they went high enough to let a branch shut out the view of the earth entirely, and then it was like being in fairyland.
One beautiful evening in the latter end of June Miss Campbell and he went out for a stroll as usual.
Eily did not follow them. Truth to say, Harry had shut her up in the saddle-room.
There was much to be seen and noticed, and oceans of wild flowers to cull, and there were birds’ nests to be visited, many of which contained only eggs, while others had in them little half-naked, hairy “gorbals,” that opened such extraordinary big gaping yellow mouths, that they could have swallowed a church – that is, if the church were small enough.
There grew not far from the five-barred gate, mentioned in last chapter, an immensely large and beautiful beech tree; and it had its branches close to the ground, so that it presented no great difficulty to get up into it.
Miss Campbell had never been this way before, but to-night her guide led her hither, under pretence of showing her a tree with a hawk’s nest in it.
The hawk’s nest was up there in the pine tree-top right enough, and it was not an old one either, for when Harry kicked the tree and cried “Hush-oo-oo!” out and away flew the beautiful and graceful bird. Then they came to the beech tree.
“Let us get up here and read,” said Harry; “the sun isn’t thinking of going down yet. I don’t think the sun is moving a bit. I don’t suppose he knows what o’clock it is.”
As soon as they were safely and securely seated, and Miss Campbell had read a short but stirring story to her pupil, Harry pulled aside a branch.
“Do you see that grass field?” he asked.
“Yes, dear.”
“Well, do you know who lives there?”
“No, Harry.”
“Towsie.”
“And who is Towsie?”
“Why, silly Guvie, Towsie is Towsie, of course; Towsie is his Christian name; Jock, I suppose, is his papa’s name. Towsie Jock, there now!”
“What nonsense are you talking, dear?” said Miss Campbell.
“Why, telling you about Towsie Jock, to be sure. Towsie Jock is so funny, and what faces he makes when I make faces at him! Mind you, Guvie, I don’t think he quite likes to be called Towsie Jock. And I wouldn’t either, would you, dear Guvie?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea, Harry, what it is all about, nor who or what Towsie Jock, as you call him, or it, is.”
“Oh, haven’t you, Guvie? Well, you shall see. Mind you it isn’t a hedgehog. Something, oh, ever so much bigger.”
As he spoke Harry slipped like an eel down from the tree. He accomplished this by sliding out to the tip of the branch, out and out till it bent with his light weight, and dropped him on the ground.
Harry went straight to the gate, the top bar of which he had previously, in one of his lonely rambles, taken the precaution to tie down. He looked now to see that the fastening was all secure, then commenced to shout.
“Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock! Towsie! Towsie! Towsie!”
Jock was at a distant corner of the field, his favourite corner, on high ground, where he could see the country for miles around. He was standing there chewing his cud and looking at the sky. Perhaps he was wondering what kind of a day it was to be to-morrow.
Suddenly he thrust one ear back to listen.
“Towsie! Towsie!” came the shout in shrill treble.
“It is that monkey again,” said Towsie, to himself. “If I can only pin one horn through him, I’ll carry him all round and round the field, at the gallop too.”
Miss Campbell, from the tree, first heard a dreadful bellowing roar, which ended in one continuous stream of hoarse explosions, as it were.
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow,” and next moment, to her horror, she saw a gigantic horrid homed bull coming tearing towards the gate, his nose on the ground, and his tail like a corkscrew over his back.
“Harry, Harry!” she screamed. “Oh! fly, Harry, fly!”
“He can’t get over, Guvie,” cried Harry, coolly. “Let me introduce you, as papa says. That is Towsie Jock. Towsie! Towsie! Towsie Jock! Towsie Jock!”
“Wow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!”
On came the bull as mad as ever bull was.
Miss Campbell shouted again, and screamed with terror.
“Harry, come, oh, dear Harry, come up. For my sake then.”
“But he can’t get over, I tell you, Guvie.”
“But I’m fainting, Harry.”
“Oh, in that case I’ll come, Guvie. Papa says, ‘Always, whatever you do, Harry, be kind and polite to ladies.’ I’m coming, Guvie. Don’t fall till I get hold of you.”
And none too soon.
“Wow-ow —woa!”
Next moment the gate flew in splinters with the awful charge of that Highland bull.
Miss Campbell’s head swam, but she clutched the rash boy to her breast, and thanked God he was saved.
Meanwhile the bull was at the foot of the tree. He first commenced an attack upon it with head and horns; every time, he battered it he shook it to its uttermost twig and leaf. But Miss Campbell and Harry had a safe seat in a strong niche between two great branches, with another branch to sit on and one behind.
At every blow the bull reeled back again.
The governess was white and trembling.
Harry was as cool as a hero.
He looked down and enjoyed the performance.
“Isn’t he naughty and wicked!” he said.
“Won’t he have a headache in the morning, Guvie!”
While attacking and battering the tree, Towsie Jock was silent, only the noise of the “thuds” resounded through the forest.
“If I had a big turnip now,” said the boy, “to throw down, Towsie would eat it and go away, oh! so well pleased, and not naughty at all.”
Towsie soon saw that to knock down that sturdy old beech was impossible; he commenced, therefore, with angry bellowings to root round it with his feet.
