ltonbury. The day was a county holiday. The delicate
orchid and the crowned pine were there, with the hairy gooseberry, the
cabbage and potato, and the homely cottage-garden nosegay from many a
woodland hamlet. The young ladies competed in collections of dried
flowers for a prize botany book; and the subscriptions were so arranged
that on this festival each poorer member might, with two companions, be
provided with a hearty meal; while grandees and farmers had a
luncheon-tent of their own, and regarded the day as a county picnic.

It was a favourite affair with all, intensely enjoyed, and full of good
neighbourhood. Humfrey Charlecote's spirit never seemed to have deserted
it; it was a gathering of distant friends, a delight of children as of
the full grown; and while the young were frantic for its gipsying fun,
their elders seldom failed to attend, if only in remembrance of poor Mr.
Charlecote, 'who had begged one and all not to let it drop.'

Above all, Honora felt it due to Humfrey to have prize-roots and fruits
from the Holt, and would have thought herself fallen, indeed, had the
hardest rain kept her from the rendezvous, with one wagon carrying the
cottagers' articles, and another a troop of school-children. No doubt
the Forest would be the place to find Owen Sandbrook, but for the rest--

From the very extremity of his perplexity, Robert's mind sought relief in
external objects. So joyous were the associations with the Forest road
on a horticultural day, that the familiar spots could not but revive
them. Those green glades, where the graceful beeches retreated, making
cool green galleries with their slender gleaming stems, reminded him of
his putting his new pony to speed to come up with the Holt carriage; that
scathed oak had a tradition of lightning connected with it; yonder was
the spot where he had shown Lucilla a herd of deer; here the rising
ground whence the whole scene could be viewed, and from force of habit he
felt exhilarated as he gazed down the slope of heather, where the fine
old oaks and beeches, receding, had left an open space, now covered with
the well-known tents; there the large one, broadly striped with green,
containing the show; there the white marquees for the eaters; the Union
Jack's gay colours floating lazily from a pole in the Outlaw's Knoll; the
dark, full foliage of the forest, and purple tints of the heather setting
off the bright female groups in their delicate summer gaietie