gardener's ladder that he might climb up and look into the
nest, but Mr. Norton would not have it lest it should frighten away the
old birds.

One delicious warm morning, too, the children had their long-promised
bathe, and what fun it was. Nurse woke them up at five o'clock in the
morning--fancy waking up as early as that!--and they slipped on their
little blue bathing gowns, and their sand shoes that mother had bought
them in Cromer the year before, and then nurse wrapped them up in
shawls, and she and they and father went down and opened the front door
while everybody else in the house was asleep, and slipped out. What a
quiet strange world it seemed, the grass and the flowers dripping with
dew, and overhead such a blue sky with white clouds sailing slowly about
in it.

"Why don't we always get up at five o'clock, father?" asked Olly, as he
and Milly skipped along--such an odd little pair of figures--beside Mr.
Norton. "Isn't it nice and funny?"

"Very," said Mr. Norton. "Still, I imagine Olly, if you had to get up
every day at five o'clock, you might think it funny, but I'm sure you
wouldn't always think it nice."

"Oh! I'm sure we should," said Milly, seriously. "Why, father, it's just
as if everything was ours and nobody else's, the garden and the river I
mean. Is there _anybody_ up yet do you think--in those houses?" And
Milly pointed to the few houses they could see from the Ravensnest
garden.

"I can't tell, Milly. But I'll tell you who's sure to be up now, and
that's John Backhouse. I should think he's just beginning to milk the
cows."

"Oh then, Becky and Tiza'll be up too," cried Milly, dancing about. "I
wish we could see them. Somehow it would be quite different seeing them
now, father. I feel so queer, as if I was somebody else."

If you have ever been up _very_ early on a summer morning, you will know
what Milly meant, but if not I can hardly explain it. Such a pretty
quiet little walk they had down to the river. Nobody on the road, nobody
in the fields, but the birds chattering and the sun shining, as if they
were having a good time all to themselves, before anybody woke up to
interrupt them. Mr. Norton took the children down to the
stepping-stones, and then, while Milly and nurse stayed on the bank he
lifted Olly up, and carried him to the middle of the stepping-stones,
where the water would about come up to his chest. Mr. Norton had already
taken off his own shoes and stockings, and when they