We'll go for three months to Longfield." Now Longfield was the Utopia of our family, old and young.

A very simple family we must have been--for this Longfield was only a small farm-house, about six miles off, where once we had been to tea, and where ever since we had longed to live.

For, pretty as our domain had grown, it was still in the middle of a town, and the children, like all naturally-reared children, craved after the freedom of the country--after corn-fields, hay-fields, nuttings, blackberryings--delights hitherto known only at rare intervals, when their father could spare a whole long day, and be at once the sun and the shield of the happy little band.
"Hearken, children! father says we shall go for three whole months to live at Longfield." The three boys set up a shout of ecstacy.
"I'll swim boats down the stream, and catch and ride every one of the horses.

Hurrah!" shouted Guy.
"And I'll see after the ducks and chickens, and watch all the threshing and winnowing," said Edwin, the practical and grave.
"And I'll get a 'ittle 'amb to p'ay wid me," lisped Walter--still "the baby"-- or considered such, and petted accordingly.
"But what does my little daughter say ?" said the father, turning--as he always turned, at the lightest touch of those soft, blind fingers, creeping along his coat sleeve.

"What will Muriel do at Longfield ?" "Muriel will sit all day and hear the birds sing." "So she shall, my blessing!" He often called her his "blessing," which in truth she was.