After dinner he asked leave to go out alone. He wanted to go and see David, but he did not wish to disturb Mrs. Pritchard. “You see she will like to have a quiet nap on Sunday afternoon,” he concluded, gravely, as if well acquainted with the habits of the elderly housekeeper. The Squire’s eyes twinkled a little. “Who told you that, young man?” Bertie looked a little perplexed. “I don’t know,” he answered, slowly. “I seemed to know it.” “Well, I don’t suppose you are far wrong. Yes, you may run along alone; you’re too big a boy to have a nurse always dangling after you. Don’t wander too far and lose yourself; but you may go and see David by yourself whenever you like.” “Oh, thank you!” answered Bertie, eagerly; and he ran off to fetch his cap, much elated by this permission. Certainly he was beginning to awake to life in a remarkable way. It was a mild and sunny day out of doors. The air was still and sweet, and the scent of spring was everywhere, as well as its signs and sounds. Primroses and anemones made a starry carpet beneath the great oak and beech trees of the level park. The buds were swelling visibly overhead, and the sycamores and horse-chestnuts had already shaken out some little tufts of delicate green. The birds sang overhead as they only sing in the sweet spring-time, and Bertie’s eyes grew dazzled with trying to follow the flight of the soaring larks, who rained down upon him the liquid melody of their joyous songs. Flat and bare as was the country round, the Squire’s park was well timbered, and the trees were tall and old and grand. His ancestors had laid out this place hundreds of years ago, had planted trees when they built the house, and had cared for the one as much as the other. The consequence was that the grounds of Arlingham Manor House looked like an oasis of green woodland amid the flat monotony of the fen country, and gave an air of picturesque well-being to the estate which it could not otherwise have possessed. Bertie looked round him as he walked down the wide carriage road with a newly awakened interest in his surroundings. The painful confusion of his mind had given place to something of natural and healthy curiosity and pleasure. There was still a sorrowful consciousness of loss in the child’s head and heart, a sense as if a black curtain had been suddenly let down across his life and had shut him off from the light and warmth he dimly knew to be behind; but he had begun to turn his thoughts away from the blank vacancy behind, and to look out with a certain dawning hopefulness into the new life that was opening out before him.