“I can’t say, Milly.  But I believe Aunt Emma’s fingers are just as quick as ever they were.  Now, children, father says he will take you out while I go and speak to cook.  Olly, how do you think we’re going to get any meat for you and Milly here?  There are no shops on the mountains.”

“Then we’ll eat fisses, little fisses like those!” cried Olly, pointing to a plate of tiny red-spotted fish that father and mother had been having for breakfast.

“Thank you, Olly,” said Mr. Norton, laughing; “it would cost a good deal to keep you in trout, sir.  I think we’ll try for some plain mutton for you, even if we have to catch the sheep on the mountains ourselves.  But now come along till mother is ready, and I’ll show you the river where those little fishes lived.”

Out ran the children, ready to go anywhere and see anything in this beautiful new place, which seemed to them a palace of wonders.  And presently they were skipping over the soft green grass, each holding one of father’s hands, and chattering away to him as if their little tongues would never stop.  What a hot day it was going to be!  The sky overhead was deep blue, with scarcely a cloud, they could hear nothing in the still air but the sleepy cooing of the doves in the trees by the gate, and the trees and flowers all looked as if they were going to sleep in the heat.

“Father, why did that old gentleman at Willingham last week tell mother that it always rained in the mountains?” asked Milly, looking up at the blue sky.

“Well, Milly, I’m afraid you’ll find out before you go home that it does know how to rain here.  Sometimes it rains and rains as if the sky were coming down and all the world were going to turn into water.  But never mind about that now—­it isn’t going to rain to-day.”

Down they went through the garden, across the road, and into a field on the other side of it, a beautiful hay-field full of flowers, with just a narrow little path through it where the children and Mr. Norton could walk one behind another.  And at the end of the path what do you think they found?  Why, a chattering sparkling river, running along over hundreds and thousands of brown and green pebbles, so fast that it seemed to be trying to catch the birds as they skimmed across it.  The children had never seen a river like this before, where you could see right to the very bottom, and count the stones there if you liked, and which behaved like a river at play, scrambling and dancing and rushing along as if it were out for a holiday, like the children themselves.

“What do you think of that for a river, children?” said Mr. Norton.  “Very early this morning, when you little sleepyheads were in bed, I got up and came down here, and had my bath over there, look—­in that nice brown pool under the tree.”

“Oh, father!” cried both children, dancing round him.  “Let us have our baths in the river too.  Do ask Nana—­do, father!  We can have our bathing things on that we had at the sea, and you can come too and teach us to swim.”