land. No zephyr dared to disturb the leaves or the glassy water;
great clouds hung in the bright blue sky--rotund, fat, and heavy, like
mountains of wool or butter. Everything in nature seemed to have gone
to sleep at noon, as if Spanish principles had suddenly imbued the
universe.

And what a business they had, to be sure, with the spreading of the
viands and the kindling of the fire! The latter was the first duty.
Hector said he would undertake it, but after attempting to light it with
damp sticks he gave it up and assisted the ladies to lay the cloth on
the grass. Then George and Fred got the fire to kindle, and Mr
Sudberry, in attempting to mend it, burnt his fingers and put it out;
whereupon McAllister came to his rescue and got it to blaze in right
earnest. Jacky thereafter tried to jump over it, fell into it, and was
saved from premature destruction by being plucked out and quenched
before having received any further damage than the singeing of his hair
and eyelashes. He was thus rendered a little more hideous and
impish-like than Nature had intended him to be.

Jacky happened to be particularly bad that day. Not only was he more
bent on mischief than usual, but Fortune seemed to enhance the value,
(so to speak), of his evil doings, by connecting them with disasters of
an unexpected nature. He tried to leap over a small stream, (in
Scotland styled a burn), and fell into it. This necessitated drying at
the fire--a slow process and disagreeable in all circumstances, but
especially so when connected with impatience and headstrong obstinacy.
Then he put his foot on a plate of sandwiches, and was within an ace of
sitting down on a jam tart, much to his own consternation, poor boy, for
had he destroyed _that_, the chief source of his own prospective
felicity would have been dried up.

It is not to be supposed that everyone regarded Jacky's eccentricities
with the forgiving and loving spirit of his mother. Mr Sudberry, good
man, did not mind much; he was out for a day's enjoyment, and having
armed himself _cap-a-pie_ with benevolence, was invulnerable. Not so
the other members of the party, all of whom had to exercise a good deal
of forbearance towards the boy. McAllister took him on his knee and
gravely began to entertain him with a story, for which kindness Jacky
kicked his shins and struggled to get away; so the worthy man smiled
sadly, and let him go, remarking that Ovid himself would be puzzled to
me