If a message were needed, a man had to saddle a horse and gallop miles with it, or perhaps foot-runners were engaged. And this means that a man, footsore and mud-stained, might arrive suddenly at your father’s door, having run or ridden over half the country, with a note to deliver in his hand. Charlotte and Henry knew a very different England to what we know now in many ways; yet essentially it was the same. The flower seeds in their garden plots grew in just the same manner as do yours, and when they went bird-nesting they found just the same kind of nests in the same kind of hiding-places as you do now. The wren’s nest, made of last year’s leaves, because it is built in a beech-wood, and the one made of green moss, because it is built in a yew-tree; these they knew just as you know them, because these belong to the kind of things that don’t change. So you may imagine them, when at last they had finished their lessons, which occupied many more hours of the day than yours, you may imagine them running out to the hay-field, which looked to them just as you see it, or running to the dairy, which held the same cool pans of creamy milk. But in one way perhaps their condition was different; they were so rarely left alone. They had always a nurse or governess or a tutor with them; and if they were with their parents, they had to sit so quiet in the large rooms that it was little or no pleasure to be there. They lived in the days that Miss Taylor writes of when she says: Good little boys should never say “I will,” and “give me these!” Oh no--that never is the way, But “Madam, if you please.” And “If you please,” to sister Anne, Good boys to say are ready; And “Yes, Sir,” to a gentleman, And “Yes, Ma’am,” to a lady. Those were the days of strict upbringing and formal manners. If a little child wouldn’t dress quickly, she was left in her night-gown all day; or if two little girls quarrelled over two new dolls that they loved intensely, their mothers would send these two new dolls back at once to the shop from which they were bought; and no matter how many tears, no forgiveness. Well, as one result of all this strict surveillance Charlotte and Henry developed a passion for being alone. The words “to escape” were to them words of magical import, and they would sometimes lean out of their little beds towards each other whispering long plans. It began something like this: “Mousie?” “Yes----?” “Are you asleep?” “No--are you?” “No. I say.” “Yes?” “Shall we escape?” “O-O-Oh....”