HONOR BRIGHT
“With his dark locks and swarthy cheeks smudgedwith dirt, the good folks took him forsome gipsy boy.”
Honor Bright
A STORY OF THE DAYS OF KING CHARLES
BY
MARY C. ROWSELL
WITH TWENTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
Copyright, 1900, by HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY.
CHAPTER I
THE CEDAR ROOM
One fine autumn morning a longtime ago, a little boy laystretched in the broad seat of a latticed window, gazing earnestlywith his great dark eyes on the scene before him. The window wasthe only one in the room, which was situated high up in a sort oftower at the corner of a big old house.
The beautiful garden surrounding the house was laid out inlong terrace walks, with wide stone steps and balustrades, andplanted with smooth-shaven yew-hedges as thick and almost assturdy as walls, and the flower-beds carpeting the ground wereablaze with glorious colors in the shadowless sunshine, for the greatbell in its wooden cote above the square red-brick gate-house wasringing out midday. Bounding the garden on every side werelofty walls, covered with the spreading branches of plum and pearand apple trees, and the rich fruit gleamed red and tawny and purple,bright as gems among the green leaves. Away beyond the garden,far as eye could reach, stretched wood and dale and fair greenmeadows, where the sheep cropped at the sweet turf and the cows{6}grazed, whisking away the tiresome flies with their great tails asthey moved slowly along. Here and there among the leafy hedgerowsand coppices, the little boy, whose Christian name was Charles,could see from his lofty watch-place the gleaming of a streamwhich wound like a silver ribbon on and on, nearer and nearer,till it reached the little wood covering the wide, sloping banks whichshut in the road leading past the house. There for some distanceit was almost completely lost in the ferny brushwood, peeping outagain at last in a rush-grown pool. Thence hurrying onward, itwound right round the walls of the house, so that to reach thegreat nail-studded main door you had to cross a little one-archedstone bridge.
Faster and faster, as he gazed upon this fair scene, the tearsbrimmed up into the little lad’s eyes, until they rolled down hischeeks—cheeks not very rosy or chubby, like those of most boysand girls of eight or n