r, and
if I had not taken you away, they would have burnt you in your beds.
You must therefore live here as my children, and you must call
yourselves by the name of Armitage, and not that of Beverley; and you
must dress like children of the forest, as you do now, and you must do
as children of the forest do; that is, you must do everything for
yourselves, for you can have no servants to wait upon you. We must all
work; but you will like to work if you all work together, for then the
work will be nothing but play. Now, Edward is the oldest, and he must
go out with me in the forest, and I must teach him to kill deer and
other game for our support; and when he knows how, then Humphrey shall
come out and learn how to shoot."

"Yes," said Humphrey, "I'll soon learn."

"But not yet, Humphrey, for you must do some work in the meantime; you
must look after the pony and the pigs, and you must learn to dig in the
garden with Edward and me when we do not go out to hunt; and sometimes I
shall go by myself, and leave Edward to work with you when there is work
to be done. Alice, dear, you must, with Humphrey, light the fire and
clean the house in the morning. Humphrey will go to the spring for
water, and do all the hard work; and you must learn to wash, my dear
Alice--I will show you how; and you must learn to get dinner ready with
Humphrey, who will assist you; and to make the beds. And little Edith
shall take care of the fowls, and feed them every morning, and look for
the eggs--will you, Edith?"

"Yes," replied Edith, "and feed all the little chickens when they are
hatched, as I did at Arnwood."

"Yes, dear, and you'll be very useful. Now you know that you cannot do
all this at once. You will have to try and try again; but very soon you
will, and then it will be all play. I must teach you all, and every day
you will do it better, till you want no teaching at all. And now, my
dear children, as there is no chaplain here, we must read the Bible
every morning. Edward can read, I know; can you, Humphrey?"

"Yes, all except the big words."

"Well, you will learn them by and by. And Edward and I will teach Alice
and Edith to read in the evenings, when we have nothing to do. It will
be an amusement. Now tell me, do you all like what I have told you?"

"Yes," they all replied; and then Jacob Armitage read a chapter in the
Bible, after which they all knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer. As
this was done every morning