but here I am all the same, coming to
you as fast as I can!" The green crops were growing darker, and the
trees were all getting out their nets to catch carbon. The lambs
were frolicking, and in sheltered places the flowers were turning
the earth into a firmament. And now a mere daisy was enough to
delight the heart of Gibbie. His joy in humanity so suddenly
checked, and his thirst for it left unslaked, he had begun to see
the human look in the face of the commonest flowers, to love the
trusting stare of the daisy, that gold-hearted boy, and the gentle
despondency of the girl harebell, dreaming of her mother, the azure.
The wind, of which he had scarce thought as he met it roaming the
streets like himself, was now a friend of his solitude, bringing him
sweet odours, alive with the souls of bees, and cooling with bliss
the heat of the long walk. Even when it blew cold along the waste
moss, waving the heads of the cotton-grass, the only live thing
visible, it was a lover, and kissed him on the forehead. Not that
Gibbie knew what a kiss was, any more than he knew about the souls
of bees. He did not remember ever having been kissed. In that
granite city, the women were not much given to kissing children,
even their own, but if they had been, who of them would have thought
of kissing Gibbie! The baker's wife, kind as she always was to him,
would have thought it defilement to press her lips to those of the
beggar child. And how is any child to thrive without kisses! The
first caresses Gibbie ever knew as such, were given him by Mother
Nature herself. It was only, however, by degrees, though indeed
rapid degrees, that he became capable of them. In the first part of
his journey he was stunned, stupid, lost in change, distracted
between a suddenly vanished past, and a future slow dawning in the
present. He felt little beyond hunger, and that vague urging up
Daurside, with occasional shoots of pleasure from kindness, mostly
of woman and dog. He was less shy of the country people by this
time, but he did not care to seek them. He thought them not nearly
so friendly and good as the town-people, forgetting that these knew
him and those did not. To Gibbie an introduction was the last thing
necessary for any one who wore a face, and he could not understand
why they looked at him so.

Whatever is capable of aspiring, must be troubled that it may wake
and aspire--then troubled still, that it may hold fast, be itself,