“What a playground was that orchard! and what playfellows were mine! My maid Nancy with her trim prettiness, my own dear father, handsomest and cheerfullest of men, and the great Newfoundland dog Coe, who used to lie down at my feet as if to invite me to mount him, and then to prance off with his burthen, as if he enjoyed the fun as much as we did!... How well I remember my father’s carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old feet, whilst the little hands hung on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle; hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers and send his hair floating and the powder flying down his back!... Happy, happy days! It is good to have the memory of such a childhood!” Miss Mitford writes on another occasion:— “In common with many only children, I learnt to read at a very early age. My father would perch me on the breakfast-table to exhibit my only accomplishment to some admiring guest, who admired all the more [from my being] a small puny child, gifted with an affluence of curls [who] might have passed for the twin sister of my own great doll. On the table was I perched to read some Foxite newspaper, _Courier_ or _Morning Chronicle_, the Whiggish oracles of the day.... I read leading articles to please the company; and my dear mother recited ‘The Children in the Wood’ to please me. This was my reward, and I looked for my favourite ballad after every performance, just as the piping bull-finch that hung in the window looked for his lump of sugar after going through ‘God save the King.’ The two cases were exactly parallel.” We have sat in the very room where this scene took place. Little is changed there, and we stepped from its windows “opening down to the ground” into the garden. A narrow footpath, bordered by greensward, led to a small flagged courtyard, flanked on one side by a quaint old brew-house, with its red-tiled roof and peaked windowed centre. Then, passing through a wicket-gate, we found ourselves in the “large old-fashioned garden,” itself gay with flowers as of yore. An adjoining house has arisen, since the Mitfords lived in their house more than a hundred years ago, but this building has in its turn grown old, so that it does not mar the character of the place.