occasionally "h-less"
English, as she tells me how the Andersons have always been tenants of
Down End since her great-grandfather came to the county and added on the
living-house to the farm-house for his young wife.

"July, 1793." The date takes my fancy. I can see the Anderson of those
days, large-boned, sinewy, stooping, with a red, fiery beard, like his
present representative, stolid, laborious, contented, building his house
here facing the coasts of France, nearly as ignorant of, and quite as
indifferent to, the wild work going on over there in Paris town as
little Annie herself can be. King, Dictator, Emperor, King, Emperor,
Commune, have come and gone, but the sturdy race of farmers sprung from
great-grandfather Anderson still carry on the same way of life in the
same identical spot.

"But I'm not amusing you," says Annie, regretfully. "If only it would
leave off raining we might go out and have a ride on the tin-tan." It
takes me some little time, and a closely-knit series of questions, to
discover that tin-tan is Southshire for see-saw; and I think how
Catherine would laugh at the spectacle of my bobbing up and down on one
end of a plank and this little country damsel at the other. Her
detestable laughter; but, thank Heaven! I need never suffer from it
again.

April 8.--Gloomy again to-day. Ink-coloured rain clouds hanging close
over the hills, their fringe-like lower edges showing ragged across a
pale sky, against which the hills themselves rise dark and sharp. Now
and again a shower of rain falls, but not energetically; the wind blows,
the clouds shift, the rain ceases, and the sky darkens or gleams with a
watery brightness alternately. Looking over the wide landscape and
leaden sea, here and there a patch of sunshine falls, while I myself
walk in gloom; now the sails of a ship catch the radiance, now a
farmstead, now a strip of sand over by Windle Flats.

I feel slightly bored. Annie went into Rexingham this morning with
Robert and the early milk cart. She is to spend the day with an aunt,
and return with the empty cart this evening. Twice a day the Andersons
send in their milk to Rexingham, and winter and summer son Robert must
rise at 3 a.m. to see to the milking, harness Dolly or Dobbin, and jog
off his seven miles. Seven miles there, and seven miles back, morning
and evening; that is twenty-eight miles in all, and ever the self-same
bit of road in every weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy