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In haymaking time, when Laura was tired of cocking hay for the twins to pull down again, and the lemonade and bread-and-dripping had vanished, and the jolly sun, like Bacchus on a barrel, sat astride the midday sky, the indefatigable twins would trot away on their private business that was not unconnected with forbidden strawberry beds, and Laura, lying on her back in the uncut hay, would stare up through the sorrel and the toddling grass, and the tall daisies, and watch the slow clouds coming up like ships over the edge of the world, and screw up her eyes till there were little white crowsfeet in the tan, to peer the better at each dazzling brightness that might be heaven itself for all she knew. Sometimes the cloud line was broken by a wisp of vapour, and then Laura tried to be sure that it was her mother’s thin hand waving to her from over the edge of heaven. But she was never quite sure.

Generally the clouds—it was a summer of northerly winds—came sailing up over a slope whose crest of beeches, a mile away, flanked Green Gates and the road; so that when she discovered The Pilgrim’s Progress, and a drifting cloud-heaven had become a stationary Cœlestial City, it was behind Beech Hill that it lay, and towards Beech Hill that, suddenly grown acquiescent in the matter of walks and picnics, she would urge the nurse and the perambulator: and it was on the sky-line beyond Beech Hill that she and Christian did at last, one autumn day, see it shining. For though she poured over the unfamiliar print till her eyes ached, it was autumn before she had mastered the book and her instructions, and could prepare for her own private expedition.