alight, you spend more time than is absolutely necessary in arranging
them; nor can you help admiring the attitude into which the graceful
creature is forced to draw up her delicate limbs, that her fairy feet
may not be in the way to impede your services. By-and-by a calf--which
you hope will be allowed to grow up into a cow--stretching up her curved
red back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to the
starting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of the
fair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridle-hand as you find the rein
that has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip that
never existed. A little further on, a bridgeless stream crosses the
road--a dangerous-looking ford indeed--a foot deep at the very least,
and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry,
serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way of
becoming so) in your arms off the saddle, nor relinquish the delightful
clasp till all risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along the
velvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge--but then
what a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate-stone, whose unsteady
clatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseech
the timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast as
you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old
stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side
of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due
disentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, and
from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a
mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and
difficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in the
world is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can you
bear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round,
and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy at
some distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea and
Nay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in your
tranquil bosom.

Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; but
look through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes will
see distinctly, in spite of the trees, a _bona fide_ farmhouse,
inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, a
shepher