I counted no less than seven breaches through
which a man of common size might step without squeezing; availed myself
of the nearest; and having with difficulty dragged my disabled foot up
the ha-ha slope beyond, took breath at the top and looked about me.

The edge of the ha-ha stood but fifty paces back from an avenue of the
most magnificent Spanish chestnuts I have ever seen in my life. A few
of them were withering from the top; and under these many dead boughs
lay as they had fallen, in grass that obliterated almost all trace of
the broad carriage-road. But nine out of ten stood hale and stout, and
apparently good for centuries to come. Northward, the grey facade of
the house glimmered and closed their green prospective, and towards it I
now made my way.

But, I must own, this avenue daunted me, as a frame altogether too
lordly for a mere limping pedestrian. And therefore I was relieved, as
I drew near, to catch the sound of voices behind the shrubberies on my
right hand. This determined me to take the house in flank, and I
diverged and pushed my way between the laurels in search of the
speakers.

"A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! Lobelia, how many horses
has your father in stable? Red, white, or grey?"

"One, Miss Wilhelmina; an' that's old Sentry-go, and father says _he'll_
have to go to the knacker's before another winter."

"Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and
bells on my toes"--

She rode unto the knacker's yard,
And tirled at the pin:
Right glad were then the cat's-meat men
To let that lady in!

--especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and
began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off
Sentry-go's head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very
imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress
in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an
escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a
complete change "--

"Law, miss, how you _do_ run on!"

The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood
at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two
leaden statuettes (headless)--a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat,
with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan
shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman's habit.
As she paced to and