We always rose early at Longfield.

It was lovely to see the morning sun climbing over One-Tree Hill, catching the larch-wood, and creeping down the broad slope of our field; thence up toward Redwood and Leckington--until, while the dews yet lay thick on our shadowed valley, Leckington Hill was all in a glow of light.

Delicious, too, to hear the little ones running in and out, bright and merry as children ought to be in the first wholesome hours of the day--to see them feeding their chickens and petting their doves--calling every minute on father or mother to investigate and enjoy some wonder in farm-yard or garden.
And either was ever ready to listen to the smallest of these little mysteries, knowing that nothing in childhood is too trivial for the notice, too foolish for the sympathy, of those on whom the Father of all men has bestowed the holy dignity of parenthood.
I could see them now, standing among the flower-beds, out in the sunny morning, the father's tall head in the centre of the group--for he was always the important person during the brief hour or two that he was able to be at home.

The mother close beside him, and both knotted round with an interlaced mass of little arms and little eager faces, each wanting to hear everything and to look at everything--everybody to be first and nobody last.

None rested quiet or mute for a second, except the one who kept close as his shadow to her father's side, and unwittingly was treated by him less like the other children, than like some stray spirit of another world, caught and held jealously, but without much outward notice, lest haply it might take alarm, and vanish back again unawares.