ng it from level fields,
were the kitchen-garden and orchard. In springtime you might have
imagined the latter to be a grove of singing trees, bearing song
for fruit: in autumn, had you seen it when the sun was low, glinting
through leaves and gilding apples and stem, you would have been
reminded of the garden of the Hesperides.

Below the fields lay a broad river--in summer, languid and clear;
in winter, turbid and full. The child often wondered (as soon as
she could wonder) if, when it was lying so tranquil under the summer
clouds, it was thinking of the frolic it would have with the great
blocks of ice in the winter; whether it loved best the rush and
struggle of the floods or the quiet of low water; and, above all,
whither it was going.

The homely faces and bent, ungainly forms of the old nurse and her
husband harmonized well with the mellow gloom about them; and the
infant Nellie completed the scene, like the spot of sunlight in the
foreground of a picture by Rembrandt.

Now, Nellie inherited her father's active disposition, and, left to
her own amusement, her occupations were many and various. At three
years of age she was turned loose in the orchard, with three blind
puppies in lieu of toys. Day by day she augmented her store, until she
had two kittens, one little white pig with a curly tail, half a dozen
soft piepies, one kid, and many inanimate articles, such as broken
bottles, dishes, looking-glass and gay bits of calico. When the little
thing became sleepy she would toddle through the long grass to a
corner, whence the river could be heard fretting against its banks,
and lie there: she said the water sang to her. Finding that this was
her favorite spot, the old nurse placed there a bright quilt for her
to rest on, and in case she should awake hungry there stood a tin
of milk hard by. This was all the attention she received, unless the
fairy of the well took her under her protection, but for that I cannot
vouch. Sometimes the puppies drank her milk before she awoke; then she
went contentedly and ate green apples or ripe cherries. Thus she lived
and grew.

By the time Nellie was seven she had seen whole generations of pets
pass away. It was wonderful what knowledge she gained in this golden
orchard. She knew that piepies became chickens--that they were killed
and eaten; so death came into her world. She knew that the kid grew
into a big goat, and became very wicked, for he ran at her one day,
throwing he