we should complain of sun and dust again!--and turn
the corner where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over the clear
deep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with the bright blue sky, and
the white clouds that flit over it; and loiter at the wheeler's shop,
always picturesque, with its tools, and its work, and its materials, all
so various in form, and so harmonious in colour; and its noise, merry
workmen, hammering and singing, and making a various harmony also. The
shop is rather empty to-day, for its usual inmates are busy on the green
beyond the pond--one set building a cart, another painting a waggon. And
then we leave the village quite behind, and proceed slowly up the cool,
quiet lane, between tall hedgerows of the darkest verdure, overshadowing
banks green and fresh as an emerald.

Not so quick as I expected, though--for they are shooting here to-day,
as Dash and I have both discovered: he with great delight, for a gun
to him is as a trumpet to a war-horse; I with no less annoyance, for
I don't think that a partridge itself, barring the accident of being
killed, can be more startled than I at that abominable explosion. Dash
has certainly better blood in his veins than any one would guess to
look at him. He even shows some inclination to elope into the fields,
in pursuit of those noisy iniquities. But he is an orderly person after
all, and a word has checked him.

Ah! here is a shriller din mingling with the small artillery--a shriller
and more continuous. We are not yet arrived within sight of Master
Weston's cottage, snugly hidden behind a clump of elms; but we are in
full hearing of Dame Weston's tongue, raised as usual to scolding pitch.
The Westons are new arrivals in our neighbourhood, and the first thing
heard of them was a complaint from the wife to our magistrate of
her husband's beating her: it was a regular charge of assault--an
information in full form. A most piteous case did Dame Weston make of
it, softening her voice for the nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, and
exciting the mingled pity and anger--pity towards herself, anger towards
her husband--of the whole female world, pitiful and indignant as the
female world is wont to be on such occasions. Every woman in the parish
railed at Master Weston; and poor Master Weston was summoned to attend
the bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer the charge; and such was
the clamour abroad and at home, that the unlucky culprit, terrified at
the