Often, on their way to school, Laura and he would take a field path which led part of the way by a brook backed by a pinewood where wood-pigeons cooed. By leaping the little stream, they could visit “the graves”. These were two, side by side, in the deepest shade of the pines, and the headstones said: “In Memory of Rufus” and “In Memory of Bess.” They both knew very well that Rufus and Bess had been favourite hunters of a former owner of the estate; but they preferred to think of them as human beings—lovers, perhaps, who in life had been used to meet in that deep, mysterious gloom.

On other days they would scramble down the bank of the brook to pick watercress or forget-me-nots, or to build a dam, or to fish for minnows with their fingers. But, very often, they would pass along the bank without seeing anything, they would be so busy discussing some book they had read. They were voracious readers, although their books were few and not selected, but came to them by chance. There were the books from the school library, which, though better than nothing to read, made little impression upon them, for they were all of the goody-goody, Sunday-school prize type. But their father had a few books and others were lent to them, and amongst these were a few of the Waverley Novels. The Bride of Lammermoor was one of the first books Laura read with absorbed interest. She adored the Master of Ravenswood, his dark, haughty beauty, his flowing cloak and his sword, his ruined castle, set high on its crag by the sea, and his faithful servant Caleb and the amusing shifts he made to conceal his master’s poverty. She read and re-read The Bride and dipped into it betweenwhiles, until the heathery hills and moors of Scotland became as real to her as her fiat native fields, and the lords and ladies and soldiers and witches and old retainers as familiar as the sober labouring people who were her actual neighbours.

At seven years old The Bride made such an impression upon her that she communicated her excitement to Edmund, himself as yet unable to read, and one night in their mother’s bedroom they enacted the scene in the bridal chamber; Edmund insisting that he should be Lucy and Laura the bridegroom, although she had told him that a bridegroom was usually one of his own sex.

“Take up your bonny bridegroom!” he cried, so realistically that their mother came running upstairs thinking he was in pain. She found Laura. crouching on the floor in her nightdress while Edmund stood over her with a dagger which looked very much like his father’s two-foot rule. No wonder she said, “Whatever will you two be up to next!” and took The Bride of Lammermoor away and hid it.