odcut to "Our Field."

People sometimes asked us what kind of a dog he was, but we never
knew, except that he was the nicest possible kind.... Peronet was
as fond of the Field as we were. What he liked were the little
birds. At least, I don't know that he liked them, but they were
what he chiefly attended to. I think he knew that it was our field,
and thought he was the watch-dog of it; and whenever a bird settled
down anywhere, he barked at it, and then it flew away, and he ran
barking after it till he lost it; by that time another had settled
down, and then Peronet flew at him, all up and down the hedge. He
never caught a bird, and never would let one sit down, if he could
see it.

Then what a vista is opened by the light that is "left out" in the
concluding words:--

I know that Our Field does not exactly belong to us. I wonder whom
it does belong to? Richard says he believes it belongs to the
gentleman who lives at the big red house among the trees. But he
must be wrong; for we see that gentleman at church every Sunday,
but we never saw him in Our Field.

And I don't believe anybody could have such a field of their very
own, and never come to see it, from one end of summer to the other.

It is almost impossible to quote portions of the "Blind Man" without
marring the whole. The story is so condensed--only four pages in
length; it is one of the most striking examples of my sister's
favourite rule in composition, "never use two words where one will
do." But from these four brief pages we learn as much as if four
volumes had been filled with descriptions of the characters of the
Mayor's son and Aldegunda,--from her birthday, on which the boy
grumbled because "she toddles as badly as she did yesterday, though
she's a year older," and "Aldegunda sobbed till she burst the strings
of her hat, and the boy had to tie them afresh,"--to the day of their
wedding, when the Bridegroom thinks he can take possession of the
Blind Man's Talking Dog, because the latter had promised to leave his
master and live with the hero, if ever he could claim to be perfectly
happy--happier than him whom he regarded as "a poor wretched old
beggar in want of everything."

As they rode together in search of the Dog:

Aldegunda thought to herself--"We are so happy, and have so much,
that I do not like to take the Blind Man's dog from him"; but