ing hat.

"Yes: the landlord said we could not drive fast because the road was
bad. Where is it bad?"

"All along back of 'ere, sir," touching hat. "We have pahst the worst
of it naow, sir: the rest is not so 'illy, sir," touching hat.

"Hilly? We haven't passed over anything bigger than a knoll. If this
is what the landlord meant by a hilly road, it _is_ a rich joke. Why,
it's as smooth as a floor, almost."

"He should go to California," says Amy, who has feeling reminiscences.
"He should go to the Yosemite Valley, over the road which runs through
Chinese Camp and Hodgden's. Probably the man never saw a rough road in
his life. I doubt if there is such a thing in England."

After half an hour's trundling along the unfenced roads of this fine
old estate, crossing ancient stone bridges, rolling through leafy
groves, startling fat cattle from their browsing, getting a hat-touch
from a shepherd who is leading his flocks across the fields in true
pastoral style, we reach the manor-house, standing stately amid dells
and dingles, pollards of fantastic growth and patches of fern and
gorse. The Boyces have returned to Paris, but nurse and the children
are still at the gardener's house, and thither we drive along the
banks of a sylvan lake, beyond which the rooks are cawing about the
chimneys.

The old gardener is nurse's father, and though he is now so old that
he no longer does any work, he is maintained in comfort by the family
in whose service he has spent a lifetime. Forty years of honest
service in one family! No wonder he feels that his destiny is for ever
linked with that of the people who have been his masters, man and boy,
for forty years. He has a delightful little cottage with thatched roof
and mullioned windows, and pretty vines rioting all over it, and in
front of it a flower-garden full of early bloom. The lilacs which
grow about so profusely are not of the color of our lilacs in America,
being of a rich purple; we should not know they were lilacs but for
the familiar odor.

A delicious ride back to Romsey in the twilight, carrying two of the
Boyce children with us. In the evening I stroll out alone, to look at
the village in the moonlight. The streets are like narrow lanes. The
houses are very old, and for the most part dilapidated, but streets
and houses are all as clean and neat as wax. Presently I come upon
the old abbey, its rugged walls and towers looming solemnly in the
moonlight, and pass the parso