that
kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in
spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew--the whole female frame full of
health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers,
thrice-high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome--and the sleep will be
sound; therefore eat away, Bessy--nor fear to laugh, although your
pretty mouth be full--for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at
your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate,
to us these lips are roses still; "thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy
breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom!
No--no--no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood
unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the
sweet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth--in all the
warmth of innocence--to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry
his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home--toil for her and the
children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold--and sit
with her in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron,
attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair--but neither so fair, nor
so good, nor so pious, as their mother.

What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the ROWAN-TREE-HUT--so still, and
seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low,
that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old
Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has
borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much under
sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed
almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white
pony--well named Samson--that she drives three times a-week, all the
year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of
articles to nearly twenty different families, living miles apart. Every
other day in the week--for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or
Samson--she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the
roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red
petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful,
with a formidable beard, and a rough voice--and violent gestures,
encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she
enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her
daughter's bedside. They s