ay to that, eh?"

Here Clara, who had been pretty much silent hitherto, struck in, and
said: "Well, really, I don't think that you would have mended matters, or
that they want mending. Don't you see that she is dressed deliciously
for this beautiful weather? And as for the sun-burning of your
hay-fields, why, I hope to pick up some of that for myself when we get a
little higher up the river. Look if I don't need a little sun on my
pasty white skin!"

And she stripped up the sleeve from her arm and laid it beside Ellen's
who was now sitting next her. To say the truth, it was rather amusing to
me to see Clara putting herself forward as a town-bred fine lady, for she
was as well-knit and clean-skinned a girl as might be met with anywhere
at the best. Dick stroked the beautiful arm rather shyly, and pulled
down the sleeve again, while she blushed at his touch; and the old man
said laughingly: "Well, I suppose you _do_ like that; don't you?"

Ellen kissed her new friend, and we all sat silent for a little, till she
broke out into a sweet shrill song, and held us all entranced with the
wonder of her clear voice; and the old grumbler sat looking at her
lovingly. The other young people sang also in due time; and then Ellen
showed us to our beds in small cottage chambers, fragrant and clean as
the ideal of the old pastoral poets; and the pleasure of the evening
quite extinguished my fear of the last night, that I should wake up in
the old miserable world of worn-out pleasures, and hopes that were half
fears.

CHAPTER XXIII: AN EARLY MORNING BY RUNNYMEDE

Though there were no rough noises to wake me, I could not lie long abed
the next morning, where the world seemed so well awake, and, despite the
old grumbler, so happy; so I got up, and found that, early as it was,
someone had been stirring, since all was trim and in its place in the
little parlour, and the table laid for the morning meal. Nobody was
afoot in the house as then, however, so I went out a-doors, and after a
turn or two round the superabundant garden, I wandered down over the
meadow to the river-side, where lay our boat, looking quite familiar and
friendly to me. I walked up stream a little, watching the light mist
curling up from the river till the sun gained power to draw it all away;
saw the bleak speckling the water under the willow boughs, whence the
tiny flies they fed on were falling in myriads; heard the great chub
splashing here and the