The sun woke me, shining hot on my nest. I looked at my watch, it was six o'clock. Thrushes and blackbirds were singing their hearts out, swallows were darting by, high in air a lark was hovering right above my head, with quivering wings, singing his morning hymn of praise. I knelt, up there on the hayrick, and let my thanks go with his to heaven's gate.
I had never felt such a keen sense of gratitude as I did that summer morning: the dangers of the night all past and over, and a beautiful new day given to me, and only seven miles and a half between me and home.
'Tis true that I was very hungry, but I started on my way and soon came to a cottage whose mistress was up giving her husband his breakfast. She very willingly gave me as much bread-and-butter as I could eat, and a cup of tea. I did not quarrel with the thickness of the bread or the quality of the butter, or even with the milkless tea—I had the poor man's sauce to flavour them.
When she heard my story, the woman overwhelmed me with pity and regrets that I had not reached her house overnight and slept there. But I did not regret it. I would not have given up my "night on the road" now it was over for worlds.
She was grateful for the sixpence I gave her—having learnt wisdom, I reserved the threepenny bit—and I went on.
The air was delicious, with a spring and exhilaration in it which belongs to the early morning hours. The sunlight played hide-and-seek in the woods. Patches of purple heath alternated with lilac scabious and pale hare-bells. The brake ferns were yellow-tipped here and there—a forewarning of autumn—and in one little nook I found a bed of luscious wild strawberries. My heart danced with my feet, and I wondered if the tramps ever felt as I did, in the summer mornings, after sleeping out under a hedge.
I reached home by nine o'clock, and then there was a hubbub, and a calling out of, "Here's Muriel!" "Why, Muriel, where have you sprung from?" "What happened last night? We were so frightened, but they told us at the station that it was an awful crowd at Paddington, and you must have missed the train, and of course we thought you would go back to Miss Black's, but you ought to have wired."
It was ever so long before I could make them believe that I had been out all night, and slept in a hayrick; and then mother was almost angry with me, and father told me if ever I found myself in such a predicament again I was to go to a respectable hotel and persuade them to take me in. But he said he would take very good care that no child of his should ever be in such a predicament again. But I could not be sorry, the beginning and the end were so beautiful.