of the school, so that the boys should not suffer from the want of a
house-tutor. This condition, of course, she readily accepted, and the
arrangement lasted for ten years, until after her son had left school
for Cambridge.

The house she took is now, I am sorry to say, pulled down, and
replaced by a hideous red-brick structure. It was very old and
rambling, rose-covered in front, ivy-covered behind; it stood on the
top of Harrow Hill, between the church and the school, and had once
been the vicarage of the parish, but the vicar had left it because it
was so far removed from the part of the village where all his work
lay. The drawing-room opened by an old-fashioned half-window,
half-door--which proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever
I had on a new frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew
through--into a large garden which sloped down one side of the hill,
and was filled with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel,
may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant
and gooseberry bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading
down the sunny slopes. There was not a tree there that I did not
climb, and one, a widespreading Portugal laurel, was my private
country house. I had there my bedroom and my sitting-rooms, my study,
and my larder. The larder was supplied by the fruit-trees, from which
I was free to pick as I would, and in the study I would sit for hours
with some favourite book--Milton's "Paradise Lost" the chief favourite
of all. The birds must often have felt startled, when from the small
swinging form perching on a branch, came out in childish tones the
"Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers," of Milton's
stately and sonorous verse. I liked to personify Satan, and to declaim
the grand speeches of the hero-rebel, and many a happy hour did I pass
in Milton's heaven and hell, with for companions Satan and "the Son,"