Lettice and I were friends by right of our differences and our sympathies, by right of a common antagonism to Sir Launcelot Trevor, and our common conviction of our each having in Roger and in Harry Davenant the best brothers in the world. Lettice and Harry royalist, and Roger and I patriots to the core; they devoted to the King and the Queen Marie, and we to England and her liberties; they persuaded that Archbishop Laud was a new apostle, we that he was a new Diocletian. I shall never forget the joy of waking early the next morning in my old chamber, and looking up and seeing the sheen of the morning in the Mere, and watching Aunt Gretel asleep in the bed close to mine, and hearing the first solitary crow of the king of the cocks, and then the clacking of his family as they woke up one by one; the bleating of the sheep in the orchard meadow, and the lowing of cows in the sheds--the lowing of White-face, and Beauty my own orphaned calf, and Meadow-sweet; and then the cheery voice of Tib, the dairy-woman, recovered from the sickness, remonstrating with them on their impatience; and the calls of Bob, Tib's husband, to his oxen, as he yoked them and drove his team a-field; and mingled with all, the deep soldierly bay of old Lion, the watch-mastiff, and the sharp business-like bark of the sheep-dogs driving the flocks to fresh pastures. It was such a delight to be among all the living creatures again. It felt like coming out of an enchanted castle, drowsy with perfumes and languid strains of music, into the fresh open air of God's own work-a-day world--a world of daylight, and truth, and judgment, and righteousness, and duty. I was dressed before Aunt Gretel was fairly awake, and down among the animals, eager to learn from Tib the latest news of all my friends in field and poultry-yard. But Roger was out before me. And before breakfast we had visited nearly all our familiar haunts--the heronry by the Mere, the creek where the waterfowl loved to build among the rushes, the swan's nest on the reedy island, the shaded fish-ponds in the orchard, the little brook below where he and I had made the weir, the bit of waste low-ground which the brook used to flood, which with Bob's help we had dyked and embanked into corn-ground for Roger's pigeons. My very spinning task with Aunt Dorothy was a luxury. I could scarcely help singing with a loud voice, as I span; my heart was singing and dancing every moment of the day. The lessons for my Father were a keen delight, like a race on the dykes in a fresh wind; the Latin grammar was like poetry to me. It was such a liberation to have come into a busy, every-day, working world again;--a world of law, and therefore of liberty, where every one had his task, and every task its time, and the play-hours were as busy as the working-hours to heads and hands vigorous with the rebound of real necessary labour.