There was no doubt about it; it was the same bird that had charmed our ears in the lane at Molesey, but, like the Hebrew captives, it could not sing its songs in a strange land. “Take it back,” my mother said, “I would not part such friends for all the world,” and off together went that loving pair, “Pretty Speckledy” still in full song, which he continued all the way down our turret stairs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI OUR EXTRA HOMES I must now make a break in the regular line of narrative, to interpolate a chapter, without specifying any particular dates, as the visits of which this portion of my story treats were spread over a large space of time, and intersected many of the different passages of the life I have hitherto recorded. To begin with Marston, the property of my uncle Lord Cork, and the early home of my dear father. Marston Bigot was a pretty place and had been purchased by our direct ancestor, Richard Boyle (surnamed the “great Earl of Cork”) from Sir John Ippisley, the representative of an old Somersetshire family in the neighbourhood. This ancestor of ours had a very large family, of whom four were sons, and every one created a peer, with the exception of the youngest, Robert, who declined the honour, and whose name is immortalised as the “Divine Philosopher of the World.” To Roger Boyle, his second son, Lord Cork gave an estate in Somersetshire; this gallant soldier and loyalist was first created Baron Broghill and afterwards Earl of Orrery. He was much attached to the royal cause, but during the Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell, who had a great admiration for his military genius, sent for him one day and placed two alternatives before him, namely, the command of an expedition against the Irish rebels, or a lodging in the Tower of London. “The choice is open to you,” he said; “in serving in this campaign you will be acting the part of a patriot, but if you prefer the walls of a prison, I have no more to say.” A long discussion ensued. Lord Broghill demurred, Cromwell insisted, and at length the former acquiesced in the Protector’s offer, with the proviso that he would never be called upon to lift his sword against his sovereign master. It is a matter of history what a distinguished part Lord Broghill played in this Irish campaign. In the pleasure ground not far from Marston there stood a quaint little cottage, one room of which had been fitted up by my uncle for his favourite daughter, Louisa, a beautiful, blooming girl, and my chosen friend, who was cut off by smallpox a few years later, at the early age of nineteen. The little cot served as a summer, or pleasure, house; we children were allowed to have tea in it, and to dig and delve in the small garden before it to our heart’s content. There was an historical interest connected with this small dwelling which enhanced its merit in my eyes.