n', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs
to't.'"

"Why, Mrs. Poyser, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a
farm-house, so well as you manage it," said Adam, taking the basin;
"and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow,
standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the
pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the
poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look
after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the
country."

Mrs. Poyser was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a
compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing
sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes,
as she looked at Adam drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey
now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from
an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one's imagination
with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey
is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire
network window--the window overlooking the garden, and shaded by tall
Guelder roses.

"Have a little more, Mr. Bede?" said Mrs. Poyser, as Adam set down the
basin.

"No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little
lass."

"Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy."

Adam walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to
the little wooden gate leading into the garden--once the well-tended
kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall
with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse
garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen
vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In
that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden
was like playing at "hide-and-seek." There were the tall hollyhocks
beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and
yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and
disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans
and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction,
and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its
low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The
garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it
too