rers (like some insects) seem to absorb or mimic the
colors of the vegetation round them and of their native soil. That is,
on work-days. Sunday-best is a different matter, and in this the other
gaffer was clothed. He was dressed like the crows above him, _fit
excepted_: the reason for which was, that he was only a visitor, a
revisitor to the home of his youth, and wore his Sunday (and funeral)
suit to mark the holiday.

Continuing the path, a stone pack-horse track, leading past a hedge
snow-white with may, and down into a little wood, from the depths of
which one could hear a brook babbling. Then up across the sunny field
beyond, and yet up over another field to where the brow of the hill is
crowned by old farm-buildings standing against the sky.

Down this stone path a young man going whistling home to tea. Then
staying to bend a swarthy face to the white may to smell it, and then
plucking a huge branch on which the blossom lies like a heavy fall of
snow, and throwing that aside for a better, and tearing off another and
yet another, with the prodigal recklessness of a pauper; and so,
whistling, on into the wood with his arms full.

Down the sunny field, as he goes up it, a woman coming to meet him--with
_her_ arms full. Filled by a child with a may-white frock, and hair
shining with the warm colors of the sandstone. A young woman, having a
fair forehead visible a long way off, and buxom cheeks, and steadfast
eyes. When they meet he kisses her, and she pulls his dark hair and
smooths her own, and cuffs him in country fashion. Then they change
burdens, and she takes the may into her apron (stooping to pick up
fallen bits), and the child sits on the man's shoulder, and cuffs and
lugs its father as the mother did, and is chidden by her and kissed by
him. And all the babbling of their chiding and crowing and laughter
comes across the babbling of the brook to the ears of the old gaffers
gossiping on the wall.

Gaffer I. spits out an over-munched stalk of meadow soft-grass, and
speaks:

"D'ye see yon chap?"

Gaffer II. takes up his hat and wipes it round with a spotted
handkerchief (for your Sunday hat is a heating thing for work-day wear),
and puts it on, and makes reply:

"Aye. But he beats me. And--see there!--he's t'first that's beat me yet.
Why, lad! I've met young chaps to-day I could ha' sworn to for mates of
mine forty years back--if I hadn't ha' been i't' churchyard spelling
over their fathers' tumstuns!"