In Spite of All by Edna Lyall — Read

This is the time when bit by bit / The days begin to lengthen sweet, / And every minute gained is joy, / And love stirs in the heart of a boy. / This is the time the sun, of late / Content to lie abed till eight, / Lifts up betimes his sleepy head, / And love stirs in the heart of a maid. / --Katherine Tynan Hinkson.

It was in the spring of 1640, just when King Charles had dissolved the Short Parliament, after its three weeks' existence, that Hilary made a discovery. She possessed a voice, a voice which, after a few lessons from the Cathedral organist, proved to be a source of real pleasure to herself and others. This event meant much more to her than the fact that England had again relapsed into the woeful plight of the last eleven years, and was once more without a Parliament. At every spare minute she was practising her guitar, or singing scales and songs, and thus it very naturally fell about that Gabriel, returning from Oxford that summer, was greeted, as he hastened along the south walk to the little gate which made the boundary between the two gardens, by a song "more tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear." Stealing quietly forward, he could catch the words, which were set to the pathetic air of "Bara Fostus' Dream";