I gazed round for a means of diverting her thoughts.

On one side of the road rose a high, rough bank, where hazels and stunted oaks, with their roots half exposed, held uncertain tenure: the soil was too loose for the latter; and strong winds had blown some nearly horizontal.

In summer Miss Catherine delighted to climb along these trunks, and sit in the branches, swinging twenty feet above the ground; and I, pleased with her agility and her light, childish heart, still considered it proper to scold every time I caught her at such an elevation, but so that she knew there was no necessity for descending.

From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing nothing except singing old songs--my nursery lore--to herself, or watching the birds, joint tenants, feed and entice their young ones to fly: or nestling with closed lids, half thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express.
'Look, Miss!' I exclaimed, pointing to a nook under the roots of one twisted tree.

'Winter is not here yet.