"In a shadowy and sweet nook of the garden was an artificial piece of rock-work, which her mother, when first married, had caused to be made there, the fragments of rock having been brought from a little distance. There Lucilla, with the gardener's assistance, scooped a hollow place, a few feet square, and arranged a pretty little hermitage: dressing a doll like an old man, and painting a piece of glass to fix in the back of the hermitage, to look like the window of a chapel. She next sent and bought a few common tools, and thought, as Bernard was very fond of clipping and cutting, she could tempt him to work to help finish this hermitage. There was a root-house close to the place, where she thought they might set to work at this business. 'And if I can but engage Bernard,' she said to herself, 'to use his fingers, I might perhaps now and then say something to soften him, and make him feel it is wrong to go on as he does.'
"Mr. Evans always gave a week's holiday at Whitsuntide, and Lucilla thought that this should be her time for trying what she could do with Bernard."
[Illustration: But when Bernard was actually to go there was such a to-do]
Second Part of the History of Little Bernard Low
[Illustration: "Let us sit here under the shade of a tree"]
"Meekin and Griffith and Price went home to spend the Whitsun holidays on the Saturday evening, and Bernard came home also, with the expectation of an idle time, which was to last till the Monday after the next.
"The weather was very fine; all the early shrubs and flowers were in bloom, the cuckoo was still in the woods, and the leaves had not lost their tender young green.
"The young men in Rookdale were very fond of ringing the bells when there was a holiday, and they rang away great part of Sunday and of Monday also.
"The bells were soft and sweet, though rather sad; but the lads in the belfry found nothing sad in pulling at the ropes, and going up and down with them.
"Lucilla missed Bernard during several hours of the Sunday; she did not guess that he had gone into the belfry with the young men, and that he had persuaded the cook to give him a jug of beer to send to them. The men would not let him pull a bell, as he was not strong enough--even the beer would not tempt them.