Barbara's search soon brought her to the conclusion that the child she sought was not in that quarter. She shut the door, and came out into a narrow gallery, from one side of which a wooden staircase ran down into the hall. It was a wide hall of vaulted stone, hung with faded tapestry, old and wanting repair, like everything else in its vicinity. Across the hall Barbara trotted with short, quick steps, and opening a door at the further end, went into the one pleasant room in all the house. This was a very small turret-chamber, hexagonal in shape, three of its six sides being filled with a large bay-window, in the middle compartment of which were several coats of arms in stained glass. A table, which groaned under a mass of books and papers, nearly filled the room; and writing at it sat a venerable-looking, white-haired man, who, seeing Barbara, laid down his pen, wiped his spectacles, and placidly inquired what she wanted. He will be an old friend to some readers: for he was John Avery of Bradmond. "Master, an't like you, have you seen Mrs Clare of late?" "How late, Barbara?" "Marry, not the fourth part of an hour gone, I left the child in the nursery a-playing with her puppet, when I went down to let in Hal Dockett, and carry him to see what ailed the black cow; and now I be back, no sign of the child is any whither. I have been in every chamber, and looked in the nursery thrice." "Where should she be?" quietly demanded Mr Avery. "Marry, where but in the nursery, without you had fetched her away." "And where should she not be?" "Why, any other whither but here and there,--more specially in the garden." "Nay, then, reach me my staff, Barbara, and we will go look in the garden. If that be whither our little maid should specially not be, 'tis there we be bound to find her." "Marry, but that is sooth!" said Barbara heartily, bringing the walking-stick. "Never in all my life saw I child that gat into more mischievousness, nor gave more trouble to them that had her in charge." "Thy memory is something short, Barbara," returned her master with a dry smile, "'Tis but little over a score of years sithence thou wert used to say the very same of her father." "Eh, Master!--nay, not Master Walter!" said Barbara, deprecatingly. "Well, trouble and sorrow be ever biggest in the present tense," answered he. "And I wot well thou hast a great charge on thine hands." "I reckon you should think so, an' you had the doing of it," said Barbara complacently. "Up ere the lark, and abed after the nightingale! What with scouring, and washing, and dressing meat, and making the beds, and baking, and brewing, and sewing, and mending, and Mrs Clare and you atop of it all--" "Nay, prithee, let me drop off the top, so thou lame me not, for the rest is enough for one woman's shoulders."