et the Duke did buy, the rest of the furniture he hired
in Reading for the week. The ringers, after being hard at work for four
hours, sent a can to the house to ask for some beer, and the can was
sent back empty.

It was towards the end of her life that Miss Mitford left Three Mile
Cross and came to Swallowfield to stay altogether. 'The poor cottage was
tumbling around us, and if we had stayed much longer we should have
been buried in the ruins,' she says; 'there I had toiled and striven and
tasted as bitterly of bitter anxiety, of fear and hope, as often falls
to the lot of women.' Then comes a charming description of the three
miles of straight and dusty road. 'I walked from one cottage to the
other on an autumn evening when the vagrant birds, whose habit of
assembling there for their annual departure, gives, I suppose, its
name of Swallowfield to the village, were circling over my head, and
I repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw those same
birds gathering upon his roof during his last illness:--

'"Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pinions on my roof...

'"Prepare for your departure hence
Ere winter's angry threats commence;
Like you my soul would smooth her plume
For longer flights beyond the tomb.

'"May God by whom is seen and heard
Departing men and wandering bird,
In mercy mark us for His own
And guide us to the land unknown!"'

Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching lines, and gayer
images followed....

It is from Swallowfield that she writes: 'I have fell this blessing of
being able to respond to new friendships very strongly lately, for I
have lost many old and valued connections during this trying spring. I
thank God far more earnestly for such blessings than for my daily bread,
for friendship is the bread of the heart.'

It was late in life to make such warm new ties as those which followed
her removal from Three Mile Cross; but some of the most cordial
friendships of her life date from this time. Mr. James Payn and Mr.
Fields she loved with some real motherly feeling, and Lady Russell who
lived at the Hall became her tender and devoted friend.

VI.

We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of Miss Mitford's
friends have done before, to look at 'our village' with our own eyes,
and at the cottage in which she lived for so long. A phaeton with a
fast-stepping horse met