‘Oh think upon the garden, love, Where you and I did walk. The fairest flower that blossomed there Is wilted on its stalk.’ ‘Why sit you there by my graveside And will not let me sleep? Your salten tears they trickle down My winding sheet to steep.’ ‘Oh think upon the spoken troth That once to me you gave. A kiss from off your clay-cold lips Is all that I shall crave.’ Then through the mould he heaved his head, And from the herbage green There fell a frosted bramble-leaf, It came their lips between. ‘Then well for you that bramble-leaf Between our lips was flung. The living to the living hold, Dead to the dead belong.’” This is certainly a sad song, but you should know the tune, to really feel its melancholy. It had far from a soporific effect on Mousie and Rob. “Did he like being there?” “Why did he stay?” “What was his head like?” “Who flung the leaf?” But then Mistress Larkynge looked into the room with a flat candle in her hand, and a frilled cap like Migg’s. And she said, “Mercy on us, tell me one thing, _is_ it thieves?” And she roundly rated Prudence for keeping the children awake, and disappeared again in a very bad temper--her white bed-jacket was like the one Mrs. Squeers wears--and her mouth full of anything but thimbles. Then at last the children, frightened lest Mrs. Larkynge should return, lay down and really went to sleep. And when they awoke, it was on the day on which their parents came to the Wheatsheaf, to fetch them. That was a joyful day. They had had enough of escaping. And when at last they found themselves once more at Blenheim, it is wonderful how pleasant it was. Even Mrs. Goodenough’s nose seemed the right shape, and their parent’s love and protection things to be grateful for. They were both of them in many ways the better for their adventure; it had brought out sound qualities in each. Years after, when Robin was a grown man and Mousie a pretty lady, they went to Mousehold Mill to revisit it. And the white donkey was still alive, only being so much older, he carried his head even more despondently than before. The door was opened by Jasper, the same kind Jasper, only a little greyer, but all the nicer for that. And beyond by the fire stood Freedom, her hair as black as ever it was in the earlier days.