Chapter I: Preface

After many years this little book is once more to see the light. The children for whom it was written are long since grown up. But perhaps the pleasure they once took in it may still be felt by some of the Millys and Ollys of to-day. Up in the dear mountain country which it describes, the becks are still sparkling; "Brownholme" still spreads its green steeps and ferny hollows under rain and sun; the tiny trout still leap in its tiny streams; and Fairfield, in its noble curve, still girdles the deep valley where these children played: the valley of Wordsworth and Arnold--the valley where Arnold's poet-son rambled as a boy--where, for me, the shy and passionate ghost of Charlotte Brontë still haunts the open door-way of Fox How--where poetry and generous life and ranging thought still dwell, and bring their benediction to the passers-by. "Aunt Emma" in her beautiful home, unchanged but for its vacant chairs, is now as she ever was, the friend of old and young; and the children of to-day still press to her side as their elders did before them. The parrot alas! is gone where parrots may; but amid the voices that breathe around Fox How--the voices of seventy years--his mimic speech is still remembered by the children who teased and loved him. For love, while love lasts, gives life to all things small and great; and in those who have once felt it, the love of the Fairfield valley, of the gray stone house that fronts the fells, and of them that dwell therein, is "not Time's fool--"

"Or bends with the remover to remove."

MARY A. WARD.

September 18, 1907.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. Making Plans

II. A Journey North

III. Ravensnest

IV. Out on the Hills

V. Aunt Emma's Picnic

VI. Wet Days at Ravensnest

VII. A Story-telling Game

VIII. The Story of Beowulf

IX. Milly's Birthday

X. Last Days at Ravensnest

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Two funny fair-haired children with their fingers in their mouths"

"'I can't do without my toys, Nana'"

"The flowers Milly gathered for her mother"

"So they put Olly up on a tall piece of rock, and he sang"

"He was quite sure that h-a-y spelt 'ham' and s-a-w spelt 'was'"

"'Suppose we have a story-telling game'"

"Haymaking"

"'Haven't you got a bump?' asked Olly"