CHAPTER I.
UNDER THE CEDAR TREE.
"There are twelve months throughout the year,
From January to December,
And the primest month of all the twelve
Is the merry month of September!
Then apples so red
Hang overhead,
And nuts, ripe-brown,
Come showering down
In the bountiful days of September!"
Mary Howitt.
It was pleasant under the shade of the huge cedar tree on the lawn at
Firgrove that golden Sunday afternoon. It was autumn, really and truly,
going by the calendar at the back of the small cat-eared diary which
Darby had coaxed from his father and always carried in his pocket. Yet
the sunshine was so bright and warm, the birds were singing so joyously
in the thickets, the rooks cawed so loudly as they wheeled and circled
like a dense black battalion at drill up against the cloudless blue of
the sky, that it was hard to believe the diary people had not made a
mistake in their reckonings or stupidly mixed their dates.
Indeed, one would have been quite sure they had done something of the
sort, and that it was still summer, only for the unmistakable signs and
tokens of harvest that everywhere met the eye. In the fields on the
hillside sloping up to meet the sky there were stooks of rich, ripe,
yellow grain still standing, waiting to be carted home to Mr. Grey's
stackyard, and there heaped into high domed castles round which children
loved to play or linger silently, watching the sleek dun mice that
darted so swiftly hither and thither, planning for themselves such
glorious games in and out and round about their well-stocked
store-houses amongst the crisp, rustling corn. Red-cheeked apples,
dark-skinned winter pears ripened slowly on the orchard trees. Big
bronze plums and late Victorias mellowed against the garden wall. And
now and then when a breeze, gentle as the flutter of a fairy's wing,
fanned the branches of the stately spreading lime tree that was comrade
of the shining cedar on the lawn, there dropped on the grass border
beside the tall hollyhocks a pale dry leaf, falling softly to the earth
from which it grew, silently as a tired bird sinks to her nest amongst
the clover blooms of summer.
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