this
moment.

"There is my old butterfly-net," he exclaimed, "and my minerals,
and--why, all the old traps! Where did you find them? I remember that
once I came up here and found everything cleared away but the
gun,--they were afraid to touch that."

"I looked in the boxes under the eaves," explained Betty. "Your little
Fourth of July cannon is there in the dark corner. I had it out at
first, but Becky tumbled over it three times, and once Aunt Mary heard
the noise and had a palpitation of the heart, so I pushed it back again
out of the way. I did so wish that you were here to fire it. I had
almost forgotten what fun the Fourth is. I wrote you all about it,
didn't I?"

"Some day we will come to Tideshead and have a great celebration, to
make up for losing that," said papa. "Betty, my child, I'm sleepy. I
don't know whether it is this rocking-chair or Serena's dinner."

"Perhaps it was getting up so early in the morning," suggested Betty.
"Go to sleep, papa. I'll say some of my new pieces of poetry. I learned
all you gave me, and some others beside."

"Not the 'Scholar Gypsy,' I suppose?"

"Yes, indeed," said Betty. "The last of it was hard, but all those
verses about the fields are lovely, and make me remember that spring
when we lived in Oxford. That was the only long one you gave me. I am
not sure that I can say it without the book. I always play that I am in
the 'high field corner' looking down at the meadows, and I can remember
the first pages beautifully."

Papa's eyes were already shut, and by the time Betty had said

"All the live murmur of a summer's day"

she found that he was fast asleep. She stole a glance at him now and
then, and a little pang went through her heart as she saw that his hair
was really growing gray. Aunt Mary and Aunt Barbara appeared to believe
that he was hardly more than a boy, but to Betty thirty-nine years was a
long lifetime, and indeed her father had achieved much more than most
men of his age. She was afraid of waking him and kept very still, so
that a sparrow lit on the window-sill and looked at her a moment or two
before he flew away again. She could even hear the pigeons walking on
the roof overhead and hopping on the shingles, with a tap, from the
little fence that went about the house-top. When Mr. Leicester waked he
still wished to hear the "Scholar Gypsy," which was accordingly begun
again, and repeated with only two or three stops. Sometimes they said a
v