10 MASTER SKYLARK

hangings down, and right things up when the chimley ’s
done.”

So at cockcrow next morning Nick slipped out of his
straw bed, into his clothes, and down the winding stair,
while his parents were still asleep in the loft, and, sousing
his head in the bucket at the well, began his work before
the old town clock in the chapel tower had yet struck four.

The rushes had not been changed since Easter, and were
full of dust and grease from the cooking and the table.
Even the fresher sprigs of mint among them smelled stale
and old. When they were all in the barrow, Nick sighed
with relief and wiped his hands upon the dripping grass.

It had rained in the night,—a soft, warm rain,—and
the air was full of the smell of the apple-bloom and pear
from the little orchard behind the house. The bees were
already humming about the straw-bound hives along the
garden wall, and a misguided green woodpecker clung
upside down to the eaves, and thumped at the beams of
the house.

It was very still there in the gray of the dawn. He
could hear the rush of the water through the sedge in the
mill-race, and then, all at once, the roll of the wheel, the
low rumble of the mill-gear, and the cool whisper of the
wind in the willows.

When he went back into the house again the painted
cloths upon the wall seemed dingier than ever compared
with the clean, bright world outside. The sky-blue coat
of the Prodigal Son was brown with the winter’s smoke ;
the Red Sea towered above Pharaoh’s ill-starred host like