Miltham Bridge, where it crossed the Cherwell. This house was a
fragment of some ecclesiastical building now no longer in
existence, and although not extensive, was ample enough for the
needs of a small household, whilst the old garden and fish ponds,
the nut walk and sunny green lawn with its ancient sundial, were a
constant delight to the two girls, who were proud of the flowers
they could grow through the summer months, and were wont to declare
that their roses and lilies were the finest that could be seen in
all the neighbourhood of Oxford.

The room in which the little company was gathered together this
clear, bright April evening was the fragment of the old refectory,
and its groined and vaulted roof was beautifully traced, whilst the
long, mullioned window, on the wide cushioned seat on which the
sisters sat with arms entwined, listening breathlessly to the talk
of their elders, looked southward and westward over green
meadowlands and gleaming water channels to the low hills and
woodlands beyond.

Oxford in the sixteenth century was a notoriously unhealthy place,
swept by constant pestilences, which militated greatly against its
growth as a university; but no one could deny the peculiar charm of
its situation during the summer months, set in a zone of verdure,
amid waterways fringed with alder and willow, and gemmed by water
plants and masses of fritillary.

Besides the two sisters, their learned father, and the two young
men in the garb of students who had already spoken, there was a
third youth present, who looked slightly younger than the dark
faced, impetuous Anthony Dalaber, and he sat on the window seat