But, though we romped a lot, Darrie, Hildreth, Daniel, and I,—and though Hildreth called me her "Bearcat" (the only thing she took from the papers, whose title for me was "The Kansas Bearcat") don't think that this made up all our life in our cottage....
In the morning, after breakfast, which Daniel and I usually ate together alone, we being the early risers of the household—I repaired to the large attic and wrote on my play. Then frequently I read and studied till four, keeping up my Latin and Greek and German, and my other studies.
Darrie also wrote and studied in her room.... Daniel led the normal life of the happy American boy, going where the other boys were, and playing with them—when he and I didn't go off, as I have said, for the afternoon, together, crabbing and fishing.
Hildreth, of course, was working hard at her book—a novel of radical love....
After four was strolling time, for all of us ... along the river, by the ocean beach, further away ... or among the pines that reached up into our very backyard.
When the grocer boy or the butcher boy came, I (for the sake of outward appearances) stepped out of sight, though it irked me, still to resort to subterfuge, when we had launched forth with such a fanfare of publicity....
"Wait till Penton wins the decree, then we can come out into the open and live in a Free Union together—or marry!" Hildreth begged of me ... and I acquiesced, for the time....
Each evening, by the open fire, I read aloud from the poets ... or Darrie or Hildreth did ... happy evenings by fire-light, that shall always live pleasantly in my memory....
We had but few disagreements, and those trifling ones.