I stamped my feet for the kitchen, and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and supping with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my father across the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun.

To hope, and not be impatient, is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my father's absence.

I knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him.

He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows.

In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying.