for
that grand tour of inspection we had been so long planning together. How
well I recall that sunny afternoon, when the shadows of the great oaks
were just beginning to lengthen. Through the greenhouses we marched,
monarchs of all we surveyed, old Porphery, the gardener, presenting
Mistress Dolly with a crown of orange blossoms, for which she thanked
him with a pretty courtesy her governess had taught her. Were we not
king and queen returned to our summer palace? And Spot and Silver and
Song and Knipe, the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous
as rigid etiquette demanded, since they were forever running after the
butterflies. On we went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of the
garden, past the weather-beaten sundial and the spinning-house and the
smoke-house to the stables. Here old Harvey, who had taught me to
ride Captain Daniel's pony, is equerry, and young Harvey our personal
attendant; old Harvey smiles as we go in and out of the stalls rubbing
the noses of our trusted friends, and gives a gruff but kindly warning
as to Cassandra's heels. He recalls my father at the same age.

Jonas Tree, the carpenter, sits sunning himself on his bench before the
shop, but mysteriously disappears when he sees us, and returns presently
with a little ship he has fashioned for me that winter, all complete
with spars and sails, for Jonas was a shipwright on the Severn in the
old country before he came as a king's passenger to the new. Dolly and
I are off directly to the backwaters of the river, where the new boat
is launched with due ceremony as the Conqueror, his Majesty's latest
ship-of-the-line. Jonas himself trims her sails, and she sets off right
gallantly across the shallows, heeling to the breeze for all the world
like a real man-o'-war. Then the King would fain cruise at once against
the French, but Queen Dorothy must needs go with him. His Majesty points
out that when fighting is to be done, a ship of war is no place for a
woman, whereat her Majesty stamps her little foot and throws her crown
of orange blossoms from her, and starts off for the milk-house in high
dudgeon, vowing she will play no more.

And it ends as it ever will end, be the children young or old, for the
French pass from his Majesty's mind and he runs after his consort to
implore forgiveness, leaving poor Jonas to take care of the Conqueror.

How short those summer days? All too short for the girl and boy who had
so much to do in them. T