literally carrying his crop. I fancy they mean to
thrash their corn in the woodhouse, at least there they are depositing
the sheaves. The produce may amount to four bushels. My companion, a
better judge, says to three; and it has cost the new farmer two superb
scarecrows, and gunpowder enough for a review, to keep off the sparrows.
Well, it has been amusement and variety, however! and gives him an
interest in the agricultural corner of the county newspaper. Master Keep
is well to do in the world, and can afford himself such a diversion.
For my part, I like these little experiments, even if they be not over
gainful. They show enterprise: a shoemaker of less genius would never
have got beyond a crop of turnips.

On we went--down the lane, over the bridge, up the hill--for there
really is a hill, and one of some steepness for Berkshire, and across
the common, once so dreary, but now bright and glittering, under the
double influence of an August sun, and our own good spirits, until we
were stopped by the gate of the lawn, which was of course locked, and
obliged to wait until a boy should summon the old woman who had charge
of the house, and who was now at work in a neighbouring harvest-field,
to give us entrance.

* * * * *

------ the aged portress (Dame Wheeler, Susan's grandmother) had given
us admittance, and we soon stood on the steps in front of the house, in
calm survey of the scene before us. Hatherden was just the place to like
or not to like, according to the feeling of the hour; a respectable,
comfortable country house, with a lawn before, a paddock on one side, a
shrubbery on the other; offices and a kitchen garden behind, and the
usual ornaments of villas and advertisements, a greenhouse and a
veranda. Now my thoughts were _couleur de rose_, and Hatherden was
charming. Even the beds intended for flowers on the lawn, but which,
under a summer's neglect, were now dismal receptacles of seeds and
weeds, did not shock my gardening eye so much as my companion evidently
expected. "We must get my factotum, Clarke, here to-morrow," so ran my
thoughts, "to clear away that rubbish, and try a little bold
transplanting; late hollyhocks, late dahlias, a few pots of lobellias
and chrysanthemums, a few patches of coreopsis and china-asters, and
plenty of scarlet geraniums, will soon make this desolation flourishing.
A good gardener can move any thing now-a-days, whether in bloom or not,"
thou