“Activity is liable to commit some injuries.”—ZIMMERMAN.

The children had to grow older, of course. To me, personally, this has always seemed their weak point; but, as it has got to be, one must face the inevitable, and make the best of it; and, doubtless, making the best of it consists in seeing that they do it as well as possible. Then, too, let us congratulate ourselves the process is gradual.

Jim and Evie did their growing gradually; and, on the whole, they did it fairly well.

One day, two or three years later, they met in the old place. The meetings were not quite so frequent now. Evie had more lessons to occupy her time. And Jim—well, Jim had not so many of the school sort, but lately he had been helping Mr. Bonthron, a farmer on the other side of Gailside, with his horses, and turning an honest penny.

Miss Mercer felt it was not quite an occupation for a prospective clerk; but the place which the minister was trying to secure for him in a business house in the nearest town was not open for him yet; Jim himself greatly desired to have this temporary occupation at the farm; and Miss Mercer’s thrifty Scots instincts sympathized with what she considered his laudable desire to turn that penny.

If the truth be told, for the penny Jim cared not at all, although vague notions that he ought to be “doing something for himself” were beginning to assail him; but to have the handling of horses really satisfied one of the yearnings of his heart.

He stood before Evie now, tall and broad-shouldered for his age, and with a certain ease of carriage, which may have been partly an inheritance from a soldier father, as Miss Mercer was wont to think, and partly the result of his eager participation in the village games.

“I’ve brought you back the book, Miss Evie,” he said, and he looked down at the solid volume on the Peninsular War, which he carried.

“Did you like it?” asked Evie. “It looked so dry.”

Jim’s eyes flashed. “Oh, I liked it, yes. These were good fights, Miss Evie!”

Evie’s next remark seemed scarcely relevant. “Poor Jim!” she said; “I’m so sorry.” But both she and he knew what it meant.

“I sometimes think, Miss Evie,” he said, “whether it’s best for me to go on reading these books.”

Probably, Evie was unwise; but, at least, she was sympathetic. She stamped her foot, observing with extreme energy:—

“It’s a shame!”

“A shame, Miss Evie! What?”

“That you shouldn’t be a soldier when you want to be.”

“I suppose,” said Jim, with an attempt at philosophy, “there’s plenty of people can’t be what they want.”

“That doesn’t make it any nicer,” said Evie, who was more practical than philosophical.

“No,” said Jim, slowly, and then he looked up more brightly, with a change of subject; “I’ve liked working among the horses, anyway. Mr. Bonthron says I’ve done very well. But the new man comes next week, and then I won’t be wanted any more.”

Then Evie suddenly had an idea. She clapped her hands.

“Jim,” she said, “we want a stable-boy!”

When Evie had an idea, it generally produced results. The old coachman, to whom she went with a more or less imperative suggestion that Jim Wallace should be engaged for the vacant post, looked extremely doubtful over it.

“What’ll he ken about horses, Miss Evie?” he asked, scratching his head.

“Lots,” said Evie, promptly, if rather rashly; “and he loves them too,” she added.

And in this last she told the simple truth, and also used an argument which weighed

Alack-a-day! that it did not work was due to Evie herself.

Miss Mercer was not at all clear about this further step in an unclerkly direction, and she discussed the matter somewhat anxiously with Alison, concluding with her usual trouble.

“And for anything we know it may be taking him out of his proper position.”

“Aweel, mem,” said Alison, “a’ the poseetion we’re kennin’ aboot was the one ye took him oot o’ yersel, and that was the ditch by the dykeside. And as long as a laddie keeps his hands at decent work, and his tongue clear o’ bad words, and gets plenty o’ exercise, and his meals reg’lar, I’m thinkin’ he needna fash aboot poseetion.”

“It will only be for a limited time, too,” said Miss Mercer, accepting Alison’s encouragement, and thinking of extenuating circumstances on her own account.

“That’s it,” said Alison. “And keep his mind aff soldiers and that, till he can awa tae his office in the town.”

Possibly it was the last argument which settled it, for Miss Mercer had a general idea that enlisting was the first step on the road to perdition.

It was a pity, after this, that the experiment did not succeed.

Jim showed so much intelligent affection in his treatment of the horses, that he very soon made his way with Lawrie, and was trusted as Lawrie had never trusted stable-boy before. One day it happened that the groom had driven into the town with the laird, and Lawrie was waiting in the stables in expectation of an order for the carriage from Miss Janet. There was a harness mare in the stables, which had a slight cold and had not been out the day before. To-day Lawrie thought some gentle exercise would be good for her; and, after consideration, he ordered Jim to saddle her, mount, and take her a certain number of times round the drive. It was an immense step for Jim, and in a sort of seventh heaven he mounted and rode out of the stable-yard in entire charge of what he knew to be a very valuable animal.

Poets are born, not made; and there are, too, some lads, who ride almost by the light of nature, and can at once put to practical use the hints given them by those who have mastered the art. Jim’s knees took a natural grip of his saddle, his toes pointed just where toes should point, and he carried himself with the air of a young lord—or what we are accustomed to consider such, for the way in which the youthful aristocracy sit their horses frequently leaves something to be desired. As he turned his horse’s head down the avenue, Lawrie looked after him, with an appreciative chuckle.

“There’s a bonnie seat! Just you better me that!” he remarked to no one in particular.

Jim rode twice round his allotted exercise ground without adventure. But the third time, as he looked across a field on his left, he saw Evie appear. He was certainly pleased she should see his triumphant progress, and stopped directly he heard her shout of command.

“What fun!” she cried, when she came up. “Jim, you’re grand now.”

Jim sat still and smiled. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she, Miss Evie?” he said, patting the mare’s glossy neck.

“Oh, what a play we might have!” said Evie, whose tendency to “realism” would probably have insured her appreciation of the modern drama, wherein ancient cab-horses, doing duty as warriors’ steeds, bring down the house and make the success of the play. “Oh, Jim, to have a real horse to play at the Knights of the Round Table with!”

Jim still smiled. He did not foresee the immediate practical application of the idea.

But Evie hurried to put it into instant execution, as she did with most of her ideas. She jumped down from the fence, which she had half climbed; ran back across the field till she reached an ash sapling, and, unfastening her sash, had tied herself up to the ash before Jim in the least understood what she would be at.

“Now, Jim,” she cried, joyously, “come on! I’m a damsel in distress. I’ve been tied up and left to perish by false Paynim knights. You’re Sir Launcelot; you must hear my cries, come galloping across the plain to rescue me, cut the cords that bind me, and then bear me off on your own horse.”

Jim paused to absorb the whole of this order. Then he spoke.

“You’ll have to wait while I go round to the gate, Miss Evie.”

“Round to the gate!” cried Evie, with scorn. “Do you think Sir Launcelot ever went round to gates? Of course, you must leap the fence, and come right over to me at once.”

And Jim did it.

Neither he nor the mare had ever attempted such a feat in their lives, but they did it; and why neither of them came to grief nobody ever quite understood.

Jim obeyed his liege lady implicitly; galloped to her rescue, dismounted and unbound her, mounted again and somehow got Evie in front of him on the top of the sixteen hand carriage mare. Regarded from a circus proprietor’s point of view it might have been a very meritorious performance; but Lawrie was not a circus proprietor, and unfortunately he had strolled out a little way from the stables to see how his stable-boy was getting on. And that was what he saw.

Lawrie was a man who, as a rule, was most careful what he said, and especially before his young mistress; but on this occasion the strength of his observations was quite equal to the demand. And who could wonder? A careful and conscientious coachman finding himself in possession of a stable-boy who had just done what Jim had done, might be excused a good deal. Jim felt that himself. When he had time to think, he saw clearly enough that he had no business to risk his master’s property even in obeying Miss Evie, and he offered no excuse.

The result, of course, was obvious: Jim was dismissed. Evie did her best; she fully explained her own share in the escapade, and implored forgiveness for Jim.

“It was all my fault, it really was, Lawrie,” she said; “I made him do it.”

“That’s neither here nor there, Miss Evie,” said Lawrie. “The laird puts thae horses into my charge, and I canna keep lads about the place that I canna trust. Jim kent fine what he ought to have done. He had my orders plain enough; and, beggin’ your pardon, Miss Evie, it’s my orders, not yours, the stable lads is expected to take. You just tell me what you want, and I’ll see it done, if it’s in reason,” he added, not unnecessarily. And then he concluded with a sort of shudder, “Losh keep me! When I saw the mare loupin’ yon fence, you might have knockit me owre wi’ a bit feather, you might that!”

Jim’s dismissal was an act of inexorable justice on Lawrie’s part, for he really liked the lad, and at the bottom of his heart could not help a little lurking admiration for the pluck with which he had taken his first leap. But he was not going to allow himself to give way to such weakness.

Evie tried intercession with her father, but she chose an unlucky moment, when he was absorbed with a new book, and the only answer was—

“My dear, you know quite well I never interfere with Lawrie’s management of those under him. If he says this boy must go, of course he must. I may say he appears to me to have acted most wrongly, and to have left no other course possible to Lawrie.”

“It was my fault,” said Evie piteously, as she went away.

“It was my fault,” she repeated sadly to Jim.

“Not a bit of it, Miss Evie,” said Jim, stoutly; “don’t you fret. It just serves me right, and Lawrie couldn’t do anything else.”

And keeping a brave front, so as not to vex his young patroness, but with a rather downcast heart, Jim went.

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