lalocs, child, and flower-de-luce: pick what you want.'

"So I go wandering among the beds along the garden, with the bees
humming round me; and there are great tufts of blue-bell, and
spider-wort, and moss-pink; and the white-haired grandchildren come and
put their faces to the paling, looking at me through the bars like
animals in a cage; and if I beckon to them, they glance at each other,
and dash away."

Thus much of Adele's account. But there are three or four more visits to
complete the parson's day. Possibly he comes upon some member of his
flock in the field, when he draws up Dobbins to the fence, and his
parishioner, spying the old chaise, leaves his team to blow a moment
while he strides forward with his long ox-goad in hand, and, seating
himself upon a stump within easy earshot, says,--

"Good mornin', Doctor."

And the parson, in his kindly way, "Good morning, Mr. Pettibone. Your
family pretty well?"

"Waael, middlin', Doctor,--only middlin'. Miss Pettibone is a-havin'
faint-ish spells along back; complains o' pain in her side."

"Sorry, sorry," says the good man: and then, "Your team is looking
pretty well, Mr. Pettibone."

"Waael, only tol'able, Doctor. That nigh ox, what with spring work an'
grass feed is gittin' kind o' thin in the flesh. Any news abaout,
Doctor?"

"Not that I learn, Mr. Pettibone. We're having fine growing weather for
your crops."

"Waael, only tol'able, Doctor. You see, arter them heavy spring rains,
the sun has kind o' baked the graound; the seed don't seem to start
well. I don't know as you remember, but in '29, along in the spring, we
had jist sich a spell o' wet, an' corn hung back that season amazin'ly."

"Well, Mr. Pettibone, we must hope for the best: it's all in God's
hands."

"Waael, I s'pose it is, Doctor,--I s'pose it is." And he makes a cut at
a clover-head with the lash upon his ox-goad; then--as if in
recognition of the change of subject--he says,--

"Any more talk on the street abaout repairin' the ruff o' the
meetin'-house, Doctor?"

At sundown, all visits being paid, they go jogging into town again,--the
Doctor silent by this time, and thinking of his sermon, Dobbins is tied
always at the same post,--always the hitch-rein buckled in the third
hole from the end.

After tea, perhaps, Phil and Rose come sauntering by, and ask if Adele
will go up 'to the house'? Which request, if Miss Eliza meet it with a
nod of approval, puts Adele by their side: Rose,