ardener's assistance, scooped a
hollow place, a few feet square, and arranged a pretty little
hermitage: dressing a doll like an old man, and painting a piece of
glass to fix in the back of the hermitage, to look like the window of a
chapel. She next sent and bought a few common tools, and thought, as
Bernard was very fond of clipping and cutting, she could tempt him to
work to help finish this hermitage. There was a root-house close to the
place, where she thought they might set to work at this business. 'And
if I can but engage Bernard,' she said to herself, 'to use his fingers,
I might perhaps now and then say something to soften him, and make him
feel it is wrong to go on as he does.'

"Mr. Evans always gave a week's holiday at Whitsuntide, and Lucilla
thought that this should be her time for trying what she could do with
Bernard."

[Illustration: But when Bernard was actually to go there was such a
to-do]

Second Part of the History of Little Bernard Low

[Illustration: "Let us sit here under the shade of a tree"]

_SECOND PART OF HENRY'S STORY_

"Meekin and Griffith and Price went home to spend the Whitsun holidays
on the Saturday evening, and Bernard came home also, with the
expectation of an idle time, which was to last till the Monday after
the next.

"The weather was very fine; all the early shrubs and flowers were in
bloom, the cuckoo was still in the woods, and the leaves had not lost
their tender young green.

"The young men in Rookdale were very fond of ringing the bells when
there was a holiday, and they rang away great part of Sunday and of
Monday also.

"The bells were soft and sweet, though rather sad; but the lads in the
belfry found nothing sad in pulling at the ropes, and going up and down
with them.

"Lucilla missed Bernard during several hours of the Sunday; she did not
guess that he had gone into the belfry with the young men, and that he
had persuaded the cook to give him a jug of beer to send to them. The
men would not let him pull a bell, as he was not strong enough--even
the beer would not tempt them.

"The Monday morning was as bright as the Sunday had been, and it was
enough to make the old young again to hear the man who was mowing the
lawn whetting his scythe whilst the dew was on the grass, and the
various songs of the birds in the trees.

"Lucilla had fixed upon this day to show Bernard the hermitage; but she
was rather put out, when she came down to breakfast,