ht, and
maybe a chance word with them, having ever from a child had a desire
to look farther into that which has been hitherto unknown, whether
it be in books or in the world at large. My lessons had been learned
that morning, as was easily done, for I was accounted quick in
learning, though no more so than others, did they put themselves to
it with the same wish to have it over. My tutor also was not one to
linger unduly at the task of teaching, since he was given to
rambling about by himself with a book under one arm and a fish-pole
over shoulder; a scholar of gentle, melancholy moving through the
world, with such frequent pauses of abstraction that I used often to
wonder if he rightfully knew himself whither he was bound.

But my mother was fond of him and so was my brother John, and as for
my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, he had too weighty matters upon
his mind, matters which pertained to Church and State and life and
death, to think much about tutors. I myself was not averse to Master
Snowdon, though he was to my mind, which was ever fain to seize
knowledge as a man and a soldier should, by the forelock instead of
dallying, too mild and deprecatory, thereby, perhaps, letting the
best of her elude him. Still Master Snowdon was accounted, and was,
a learned man, though scarcely knowing what he knew and easily
shaken by any bout of even my boyish argument, until, I think, he
was in some terror of me, and like one set free when he had heard my
last page construed, and was off with his fish-pole and his book to
the green side of some quiet pool. So I, with my book-lesson done,
but my mind still athirst for more knowledge, and, maybe, curious,
for all thirst is not for the noblest ends, crawled through a gap in
the snowy May hedge, and was slinking across the park of Cavendish
Hall with long, loose-jointed lopes like a stray puppy, and maybe
with some sense of being where I should not, though I could not have
rightly told why, since there were no warnings up against
trespassers, and I had no designs upon any hare nor deer.

Be that as it may, I was going along in such fashion through the
greenness of the park, so deep with rich lights and shadows on it
that May morning that it seemed like plunging thought-high in a
green sea, when suddenly I stopped and my heart leapt, for there sat
in the grass before me, clutching some of it with a tiny hand like a
pink pearl, the sweetest little maid that ever this world held.