k him out of doors if he looks like a dandy." And off strode the
stout yeoman in his clouted shoes, his leather gaiters, and smockfrock,
and a beard (it was Friday) of six days' growth; looking altogether
prodigiously like a man who would keep his word.

Susan, on her part, continued to thread the narrow winding lanes that
led towards Wantage; walking leisurely along, and forming as she went,
half unconsciously, a nosegay of the wild flowers of the season; the
delicate hare-bell, the lingering wood-vetch, the blue scabious, the
heaths which clustered on the bank, the tall graceful lilac campanula,
the snowy bells of the bindweed, the latest briar-rose, and that
species of clematis, which, perhaps, because it generally indicates
the neighbourhood of houses, has won for itself the pretty name of the
traveller's joy, whilst that loveliest of wild flowers, whose name is
now sentimentalised out of prettiness, the intensely blue forget-me-not,
was there in rich profusion.

Susan herself was not unlike her posy; sweet and delicate, and full of
a certain pastoral grace. Her light and airy figure suited well with a
fair mild countenance, breaking into blushes and smiles when she spoke,
and set off by bright ringlets of golden hair, parted on her white
forehead, and hanging in long curls on her finely-rounded cheeks. Always
neat but never fine, gentle, cheerful, and modest, it would be difficult
to find a prettier specimen of an English farmer's daughter than Susan
Howe. But just now the little damsel wore a look of care not usual to
her fair and tranquil features; she seemed, as she was, full of trouble.

"Poor William!" so ran her thoughts, "my father would not even listen
to his last letter because it poisoned him with musk. I wonder that
William can like that disagreeable smell. I and he expects him to come
down on the top of the coach, instead of which, he says that he means
to purchase a--a--(even in her thoughts poor Susan could not master
the word, and was obliged to have recourse to the musk-scented billet)
britschka--ay, that's it!--or a droschky; I wonder what sort of things
they are--and that he only visits us _en passant_ in a tour, for which,
town being so empty, and business slack, his employer has given him
leave, and in which he is to be accompanied by his friend Monsieur
Victor--Victor--I can't make out his other name--an eminent perfumer who
lives next door. To think of bringing a Frenchman here, remembering h