My Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth-century cottage rented at four pounds a year. There are two bedrooms, very small and lime-washed, and a living room with a stone floor and open hearth. A simple place, built of cob, and thatched, with a walled-in garden before it, and then the village street. The churchyard with its elm-rookery is on one side, a small brook below the wall. Even in the hot summer the water runs; I have made a pool of stones where the swallows and martins can go for the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it is to see, in the shadow of the trees, these birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by the pool’s edge, and shovelling the red mortar on their beaks. They are timid, restless things, rising into the air at the least noise. I have passed many hours in watching them, noting the number of times they came in a minute, and how they mix fragments of dried grass and straw with the mud before taking the material aloft. All the while the water murmured, and the birds answered with gentle song. They soon came to know me, and minded not my presence; and I kept away marauding village cats--lean animals with pointed ears and staring eyes; a race existing on rats. Sometimes a little boy comes and stands by me, and watches them too. He is a funny little fellow, about two and a half years old, with yellow curls and solemn brown eyes. His name is Ernie, and his father is a labourer, a very kind man. He used to spend all his money in the inn, but suddenly took a wife, and drank no more. When Ernie is a naughty boy, he threatens to go “up to pub,” and Ernie wails immediately, and is good again. “I got this one,” says Ernie, coming to the cottage door, and holding out in a filthy paw a piece of cake. “You ain’t got this one, ave ee?” “Go away, Ernie, I’m writing.” “You ain’t got this one,” he replies, munching the cake, “ave ee, Mis’r Wisson?” I feel more comfortable in the company of children than with “grown-ups”; and to discourage his talk I put my tongue out, and make a hideous face. “Ah’ll cut ees tongue off, ah wull,” he gravely warns, repeating what his mother has said to him when he has done it to her--a frequent happening, I fear; I taught him to do it. “Good-bye,” I shout. Then he departs, and five minutes later I hear a feeble “_’onk-’onk-’onk_” in my garden. Ernie is driving his car, which he has made from my wheelbarrow, a cinder sifter, and an egg-shaped pair of pram-wheels. “’Onk-’onk,” he cries to the sparrows, “git out, ’onk-’onk.” Then on seeing me: “I got this one. You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee?” “Noomye!” I exclaim, while Ernie goes faster and faster. This motor-car is not the only toy. The pram-wheels, or “wills,” as he calls them, are a source of happiness. A broom tied to the axle acts as a horse, and Ernie goes driving in the road. Other small brats come up, and a puppy dog or two, and great fun they have, often ending up in the stream.