"My dear daddy! He knows more of St. Augustine than of how many cows feed in the five-acre meadow. But he knows very well I have few pennies to jingle in my pocket, for he has fewer yet. But such matters never trouble him; he only desired money to buy books, and give him but a book and he would forget if he had eat his dinner or no." She chatted away as she tripped from dairy to larder; it was a rare holiday for the lonely girl to find a companion, and a companion of her own age. Two long years of poverty and seclusion had not dulled Audrey's gay spirits, which only waited a chance to bubble forth. Old Madam Isham had sheltered her great niece out of family pride, not out of family affection; and Audrey had left the love and luxury of her grandfather's house to enter a life as dull and as cold as that of a nunnery. Madam Isham considered most of her country neighbours to be either parvenus or white-washed rebels, while she was too proud to show her poverty to the few gentlefolk she considered worthy of her acquaintance. Old, sad, and sour, Audrey found the old lady's maundering lamentations over the good times of King James a sad contrast to her grandfather's discussions of public matters, or her father's learned conversation. Morning prayers in the chilly little church, an occasional airing in the shabby coach, with its moth-eaten cushions and patched harness, were the only varieties in Audrey's life. She became better skilled in the making of pickles and preserves than ever she could have been in the masculine household at Hunstanton, where the old servants would have broken their hearts if their little mistress had ever set her dainty finger to anything rougher than gathering rose-leaves and lavender to scent the best parlour. But the dull external life had no real effect on Audrey's spirits; she bore her great-aunt's peevishness and the monotony of her days with cheerful equanimity, for this all was but a parenthesis; soon she would join the beloved father whom she tended and petted and scolded and revered, and they would begin a new life in a wonderful country, where she should see live savages with painted faces and feather head-dresses, and valiant soldiers and frontiersmen, whose adventures were as romantic as those of Robin Hood, and saintly ministers who had fled from persecution, like the people in Fox's Book of Martyrs; her brilliant fancy painted the Western land with all the hues of the sunset. Full of healthful energy, it was a relief to her to help the solitary maid in her household work; that was the least dull part of her new life; and, in the kitchen, the Queen of Hunstanton could still rule imperiously over the old cowman, and make the dairywoman tremble before her royal displeasure.