bout it. However, they were greatly
delighted, and Euphemia who was of a grateful and affectionate
disposition, actually thanked me, for having with my own hands arranged
such pretty rooms for them.

This was a very good beginning. They were both hard-working, civil
girls, and got on very well together, leaving me plenty of leisure to
attend to the quantities of necessary arrangements which have to be made
when you are settling yourself for good, fifty miles from a shop, and
on a spot where no other human being has ever lived before. F----
congratulated myself in private on my exceptional good luck, and
attributed it partly to my having followed the Upholsterer's advice
in that book of Mr. Wilkie Collins. But as it turned out, F---- was
dwelling in a fool's paradise. In vain had it been pointed out to me
that a certain stalwart north countryman, whose shyness could only be
equalled by his appetite, had been a most regular attendant for some
weeks past at our Sunday evening services, accepting the offer of tea
in the kitchen, afterwards, with great alacrity. I scouted these
insinuations, appealing to the general sense of the public as to whether
Moffatt had _ever_ been known to refuse a meal anywhere, or under any
circumstances, and declaring that, if he was "courting," it was being
done in solemn silence, for never a sound filtered through the thin
wooden planks between the kitchen and the dining room, except the
clatter of a vigorously plied knife and fork, for Moffatt's teas always
included a shoulder of mutton.

But I was wrong and others were right. Early in October, our second
spring month, I chanced to get up betimes one delicious, calm morning, a
morning when it seemed a new and exquisite pleasure to open each window
in succession, and fill one's lungs with a deep, deep breath of that
heavenly atmosphere, at once so fresh and so pure.

Quiet as the little homestead lay, nestled among the hills, there were
too many morning noises stirring among the animals for any one to feel
lonely or dull, I should have thought. From a distance came a regular,
monotonous, lowing sound. That was "Hetty," the pretty little yellow
Alderney, announcing from the swamps that she and her two female friends
were quite ready to be milked. Their calves answered them dutifully from
the English grass paddock, and between the two I could see Mr. U----'s
tall figure stalking down the flat with his cattle dog at his heels, and
hear his merr