me until I was
close under it." The lanes certainly wore that aspect of never being
accepted as a way of travel; but this was a delightful recommendation to
our walk, for summer kept her own way there, and grass and wild-flowers
were abundant. It was already noon, and low clouds and mists were lying
about the earth and sky as we approached a forlorn little village on the
edge of the wide marshes described in the opening of the novel. This was
Cooling, and passing by the few cottages, the decayed rectory, and
straggling buildings, we came at length to the churchyard. It took but a
short time to make us feel at home there, with the marshes on one hand,
the low wall over which Pip saw the convict climb before he dared to run
away; "the five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half
long, ... sacred to the memory of five little brothers, ...to which I
had been indebted for a belief that they all had been born on their
backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken
them out in this state of existence";--all these points, combined with
the general dreariness of the landscape, the far-stretching marshes, and
the distant sea-line, soon revealed to us that this was Pip's country,
and we might momently expect to see the convict's head, or to hear the
clank of his chain, over that low wall.

We were in the churchyard now, having left the pony within eye-shot, and
taken the baskets along with us, and were standing on one of those very
lozenges, somewhat grass-grown by this time, and deciphering the
inscriptions. On tiptoe we could get a wide view of the marsh, with, the
wind sweeping in a lonely limitless way through the tall grasses.
Presently hearing Dickens's cheery call, we turned to see what he was
doing. He had chosen a good flat gravestone in one corner (the corner
farthest from the marsh and Pip's little brothers and the expected
convict), had spread a wide napkin thereupon after the fashion of a
domestic dinner-table, and was rapidly transferring the contents of the
hampers to that point. The horrible whimsicality of trying to eat and
make merry under these deplorable circumstances, the tragic-comic
character of the scene, appeared to take him by surprise. He at once
threw himself into it (as he says in "Copperfield" he was wont to do
with anything to which he had laid his hand) with fantastic eagerness.
Having spread the table after the most approved style, he suddenly
disappeared behind