SQUIRE WALCOTE had given the Wren's End family the run of his woods, and, what was even more precious, permission to use the river-path through his grounds. Lady Mary, who had no children of her own, was immensely interested in Tony and little Fay, and would give Jan more advice as to their management in an hour than the vicar's wife ever offered during the whole of their acquaintance. But then she had a family of eight.

But the first time Tony went to the river Jan took him alone; and not to the near water in Squire Walcote's grounds, but to the old bridge that crossed the Amber some way out of the village. It was the typical Cotswold bridge, with low parapets that make such a comfortable seat for meditative villagers. Just before they reached it she loosed Tony's hand, and held her breath to see what he would do. Would he run straight across to get to the other side, or would he look over?

Yes. He went straight to the low wall; stopped, looked over, leaned over, and stared and stared.

Jan gave a sigh of relief.

The water of the Amber just there is deep and clear, an infinite thing for a child to look down into; but it was not of that Jan was thinking.

Hugo was no fisherman. Water had no attraction for him, save as a pleasant means of taking exercise. He was a fair oar; but for a stream that wouldn't float a boat he cared nothing at all.

Charles Considine Smith had angled diligently. In fact, he wrote almost as much about the habits of trout as about wrens. James Ross, the gallant who carried off the second Tranquil, had been fishing at Amber Guiting when he first saw her. Anthony's father fished and so did Anthony; and Jan, herself, could throw a fly quite prettily. Yet, your true fisherman is born, not made; it is not a question of environment, but it is, very often, one of heredity; for the tendency comes out when, apparently, every adverse circumstance has combined to crush it.

And no mortal who cares for or is going to care for fishing can ever cross a bridge without stopping to look down into the water.

"There's a fish swimming down there," Tony whispered (was it instinct made him whisper? Jan wondered), "brown and speckledy, rather like the thrushes in the garden."

Jan clutched nervously at the little coat while Tony hung over so far that only his toes were on the ground. She had brought a bit of bread in her pocket, and let him throw bits to the greedy, wily old trout who had defied a hundred skilful rods. On that first day old Amber whispered her secret to Tony and secured another slave.

For Jan it was only another proof that Tony possessed a sterling character. Since her sister's disastrous marriage she had come to look upon a taste for fishing as more or less of a moral safeguard. She had often reflected that if only Fay had not been so lukewarm with regard to the gentle craft—and so bored in a heavenly place where, if it did rain for twenty-three of the twenty-four hours, even a second-rate rod might land fourteen or fifteen pounds of good sea-trout in an afternoon—she could never have fallen in love with Hugo Tancred, who was equally without enthusiasm and equally bored till he met Fay. Jan was ready enough now to blame herself for her absorption at this time, and would remember guiltily the relief with which she and her father greeted Fay's sudden willingness to remain a week longer in a place she previously had declared to be absolutely unendurable.

The first time Tony's sister went to Amber Bridge Meg took them both. Little Fay descended from her pram just before they reached it, declaring it was a "nice dly place to walk." She ran on a little ahead, and before Meg realised what she was doing, she had scrambled up on to the top of the low wall and run briskly along it till her progress was stopped by a man who was leaning over immersed in thought. He nearly fell in himself, when a clear little voice inquired, "Do loo mind if I climb over loo?"

It was Farmer Burgess, and he clasped the tripping lady of the white woolly gaiters in a pair of strong arms, and lifted her down just as the terrified Meg reached them.

"Law, Missie!" gasped Mr. Burgess, "you mustn't do the like o' that there. It's downright fool'ardy."

"Downlight foolardy," echoed little Fay. "And what nelse?"

According to Mr. Burgess it was dangerous and a great many other things as well, but he lost his heart to her in that moment, and she could twist him round her little finger ever after.

To be told that a thing was dangerous was to add to its attractions. She was absolutely without fear, and could climb like a kitten. She hadn't been at Wren's End a week before she was discovered half-way up the staircase on the outside of the banisters. And when she had been caught and lifted over by a white-faced aunt, explained that it was "muts the most instasting way of going up tairs."

When asked how she expected to get to the other side at the top, she giggled derisively and said "ovel."

Jan seriously considered a barbed-wire entanglement for the outside edge of her staircase after that.

While Meg rested in the hammock Jan spent a strenuous morning in Guiting Woods with the children and William. Late windflowers were still in bloom, and early bluebells made lovely atmospheric patches under the trees, just as though a bit of the sky had fallen, as in the oft-told tale of "Cockie Lockie." There were primroses, too, and white violets, so that there were many little bunches with exceedingly short stalks to be arranged and tied up with the worsted provident Auntie Jan had brought with her; finally they all sat down on a rug lined with mackintosh, and little Fay demanded "Clipture."

"Clipture" was her form of "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their dramatic simplicity and directness.

That morning Joseph and his early adventures and the baby Moses were the favourites, and when these had been followed by "The Three Bears" and "Cock Robin," it was time to collect the bouquets and go home. And on the way home they met Captain Middleton. William spied him afar off, and dashed towards him with joyful, deep-toned barks. He was delighted to see William, said he had grown and was in the pink of condition; and then announced that he had already been to Wren's End and had seen Miss Morton. There was something in the tone of this avowal that made Jan think. It was shy, it was proud, it seemed to challenge Jan to find any fault in his having done so, and it was supremely self-conscious. He walked back with them to the Wren's End gate, and then came a moment of trial for William.

He wanted to go with his master.

He wanted to stay with the children.

Captain Middleton settled it by shaking each offered paw and saying very seriously: "You must stay and take care of the ladies, William. I trust you." William looked wistfully after the tall figure that went down the road with the queer, light, jumpetty tread of all men who ride much.

Then he trotted after Jan and the children and was exuberantly glad to see Meg again.

She declared herself quite rested; heard that they had seen Captain Middleton, and met unmoved the statement that he was coming to tea.

But she didn't look nearly so well rested as Jan had hoped she would.

After the children's dinner Meg went on duty, and Jan saw no more of the nursery party till later in the afternoon. The creaking wheels of two small wheelbarrows made Jan look up from the letters she was writing at the knee-hole table that stood in the nursery window, and she beheld little Fay and Tony, followed by Meg knitting busily, as they came through the yew archway on to the lawn.

Meg subsided into one of the white seats, but the children processed solemnly round, pausing under Jan's window.

"I know lots an' lots of Clipture," her niece's voice proclaimed proudly as she sat down heavily in her wheelbarrow on the top of some garden produce she had collected.

"How much do you know?" Tony asked sceptically.

"Oh, lots an' lots, all about poor little Jophez in the bullushes, and his instasting dleams."

"Twasn't Jophez," Tony corrected. "It was Mophez in the bulrushes, and he didn't have no dreams. That was Jophez."

"How d'you know," Fay persisted, "that poor little Mophez had no dleams? Why shouldn't he have dleams same as Jophez?"

"It doesn't say so."

"It doesn't say he didn't have dleams. He had dleams, I tell you; I know he had. Muts nicer dleams van Jophez."

"Let's ask Meg; she'll know."

Jan gave a sigh of relief. The children had not noticed her, and Meg had a fertile mind.

The wheelbarrows were trundled across the lawn and paused in front of Meg, while a lively duet demanded simultaneously:

When Meg had disentangled the questions and each child sat down in a wheelbarrow at her feet, she remarked judicially: "Well, there's nothing said about little Moses' dreams, certainly; but I should think it's quite likely the poor baby did have dreams."

"What sort of dleams? Nicer van sheaves and sings, wasn't they?"

"I should think," Meg said thoughtfully, "that he dreamed he must cry very quietly lest the Egyptians should hear him."

"Deah littoo Mophez ... and what nelse?"

Meg was tempted and fell. It was very easy for her to invent "dleams" for "deah littoo Mophez" lying in his bulrush ark among the flags at the river's edge. And, wholly regardless of geography, she transported him to the Amber, where the flags were almost in bloom at that moment, such local colour adding much to the realism of her stories.

Presently William grew restless. He ran to Anthony's Venetian gate in the yew hedge and squealed (William never whined) to get out. Tony let him out, and he fled down the drive to meet his master, who had come a good half-hour too soon for tea.

Jan continued to try and finish her letters while Captain Middleton, coatless, on all-fours, enacted an elephant which the children rode in turn. When he had completely ruined the knees of his trousers he arose and declared it was time to play "Here we go round the mulberry-bush," and it so happened that once or twice he played it hand-in-hand with Meg.

Jan left her letters and went out.

The situation puzzled her. She feared for Meg's peace of mind, for Captain Middleton was undoubtedly attractive; and then she found herself fearing for his.

After tea and more games with the children Captain Middleton escorted his hostess to church, where he joined his aunt in the Manor seat.

During church Jan found herself wondering uneasily:

"Was everybody going to fall in love with Meg?"

"Would Peter?"

"What a disagreeable idea!"

And yet, why should it be?

Resolutely she told herself that Peter was at perfect liberty to fall in love with Meg if he liked, and set herself to listen intelligently to the Vicar's sermon.

Meg started to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention.

Little Fay urgently demanded the whole cycle of little Mophez' dleams over again. And for the life of her Meg couldn't remember them either in their proper substance or sequence—and this in spite of the most persistent prompting, and she failed utterly to reproduce the entertainment of the afternoon. Both children were disappointed, but little Fay, accustomed as she was to Auntie Jan's undeviating method of narrating "Clipture," was angry as well. She fell into a passion of rage and nearly screamed the house down. Since the night of Ayah's departure there had not been such a scene.

Poor Meg vowed (though she knew she would break her vow the very first time she was tempted) that never again would she tamper with Holy Writ, and for some weeks she coldly avoided both Jophez and Mophez as topics of conversation.

Meg could never resist playing at things, and what "Clipture" the children learned from Jan in the morning they insisted on enacting with Meg later in the day.

Sometimes she was seized with misgiving as to the propriety of these representations, but dismissed her doubts as cowardly.

"After all," she explained to Jan, "we only play the very human bits. I never let them pretend to be anybody divine ... and you know the people—in the Old Testament, anyway—were most of them extremely human, not to say disreputable at times."

It is possible that "Clipture's" supreme attraction for the children was that it conveyed the atmosphere of the familiar East. The New Testament was more difficult to play at, but, being equally dramatic, the children couldn't see it.

"Can't we do one teeny miracle?" Tony would beseech, but Meg was firm; she would have nothing to do with either miracles nor yet with angels. Little Fay ardently desired to be an angel, but Meg wouldn't have it at any price.

"You're not in the least like an angel, you know," she said severely.

"What for?"

"Because angels are perfectly good."

"I could pletend to be puffectly good."

"Let's play Johnny Baptist," suggested the ever-helpful Tony, "and we could pittend to bring in his head on a charger."

"Certainly not," Meg said hastily. "That would be a horrid game."

"Let me be the daughter!" little Fay implored, "and dance in flont of Helod."

This was permitted, and Tony, decorated with William's chain, sat gloomily scowling at the gyrations of "the daughter," who, assisted by William, danced all over the nursery: and Meg, watching the representation, decided that if the original "daughter" was half as bewitching as this one, there really might have been some faint excuse for Herod.

Hannah had no idea of these goings-on, or she would have expected the roof to fall in and crush them. Yet she, too, was included among the children's prophets, owing to her exact and thorough knowledge of "Clipture." Hannah's favourite part of the Bible was the Book of Daniel, which she knew practically by heart; and her rendering of certain chapters was—though she would have hotly resented the phrase—extremely dramatic.

It is so safe and satisfying to know that your favourite story will run smoothly, clause for clause, and word for word, just as you like it best, and the children were always sure of this with Hannah.

Anne Chitt would listen open-mouthed in astonishment, exclaiming afterwards, "Why, 'Annah, wot a tremenjous lot of Bible verses you 'ave learned to be sure."

The children once tried Anne Chitt as a storyteller, but she was a failure.

As she had been present at several of Hannah's recitals of the Three Children and the burning fiery furnace, they thought it but a modest demand upon her powers. But when—instead of beginning with the sonorous "Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages"—when she wholly omitted any reference to "the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick"—and essayed to tell the story in broad Gloucestershire and her own bald words, the disappointed children fell upon her and thumped her rudely upon the back; declaring her story to be "kutcha" and she, herself, a budmash. Which, being interpreted, meant that her story was most badly made and that she, herself, was a rascal.

Anne Chitt was much offended, and complained tearfully to Jan that she "wouldn't 'ave said nothin' if they'd called 'er or'nery names, but them there Injian words was more than she could abear."