IT WAS A LITTLE BOAT




CHAPTER I.

THE OLD HOUSE.


"Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat."


Once upon a time in an old town, in an old street, there stood a very
old house. Such a house as you could hardly find nowadays, however you
searched, for it belonged to a gone-by time--a time now quite passed
away.

It stood in a street, but yet it was not like a town house, for though
the front opened right on to the pavement, the back windows looked out
upon a beautiful, quaintly terraced garden, with old trees growing so
thick and close together that in summer it was like living on the edge
of a forest to be near them; and even in winter the web of their
interlaced branches hid all clear view behind.

There was a colony of rooks in this old garden. Year after year they
held their parliaments and cawed and chattered and fussed; year after
year they built their nests and hatched their eggs; year after year, I
_suppose_, the old ones gradually died off and the young ones took their