y shoulder to see how he was
profiting by his freedom. The brute was looking after me; and no sooner
did he catch my eye than he put up his long white face into the air,
pulled an impudent mouth at me, and began to bray derisively. If ever
any one person made a grimace at another, that donkey made a grimace at
me. The hardened ingratitude of his behaviour, and the impertinence that
inspired his whole face as he curled up his lip, and showed his teeth,
and began to bray, so tickled me, and was so much in keeping with what I
had imagined to myself about his character, that I could not find it in
my heart to be angry, and burst into a peal of hearty laughter. This
seemed to strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by way
of rejoinder; and we went on for a while, braying and laughing, until I
began to grow a-weary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned
to pursue my way. In so doing--it was like going suddenly into cold
water--I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was
all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question
that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey
in the placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she had already
recommended her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself
for the worst. And so, to reassure her, I uncovered and besought her,
after a very staid fashion, to put me on my way to Great Missenden. Her
voice trembled a little, to be sure, but I think her mind was set at
rest; and she told me, very explicitly, to follow the path until I came
to the end of the wood, and then I should see the village below me in
the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courtesies, the little old
maid and I went on our respective ways.

Nor had she misled me. Great Missenden was close at hand, as she had
said, in the trough of a gentle valley, with many great elms about it.
The smoke from its chimneys went up pleasantly in the afternoon
sunshine. The sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled the neighbouring
fields and hung about the quaint street corners. A little above, the
church sits well back on its haunches against the hill-side--an attitude
for a church, you know, that makes it look as if it could be ever so
much higher if it liked; and the trees grew about it thickly, so as to
make a density of shade in the churchyard. A very quiet place it looks;
and yet I saw many boards and posters about threatening di