, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now
and then,--and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the
old melancholy-looking yew-trees,[338-10] or the firs, and picking up
the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to
look at,--or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine
garden smells around me,--or basking in the orangery,[338-11] till I
could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the
limes in that grateful warmth,--or in watching the dace[338-12] that
darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in
silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings,--I had
more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet
flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of
children.

Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which,
not unobserved by Alice he had meditated dividing with her, and both
seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant.

[Illustration: ROAMING ABOUT THAT HUGE MANSION]

Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their
great-grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial
manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L----,[340-13]
because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest
of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of
us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an
imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the
county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out,--and
yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much
spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries;--and how their
uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the
admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most
especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a
lame-footed[340-14] boy--for he was a good bit older than I--many a mile
when I could not walk for pain; and how in after life he became
lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough
for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how
considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed;--and how when he
died,[340-15] though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he