provement was more
visible; and on the third day Waife paid his bill, and conducted her to
the rural abode to which, credulous at last of his promises to share it
with her for a time, he enticed her fated steps. It was little more than
a mile beyond the suburbs of the town; and, though the walk tired
her, she concealed fatigue, and would not suffer him to carry her. The
cottage now smiled out before them,--thatched gable roof, with fancy
barge board; half Swiss, half what is called Elizabethan; all the fences
and sheds round it, as only your rich traders, condescending to turn
farmers, construct and maintain,--sheds and fences, trim and neat, as
if models in waxwork. The breezy air came fresh from the new haystacks;
from the woodbine round the porch; from the breath of the lazy kine,
as they stood knee-deep in the pool, that, belted with weeds and
broad-leaved water-lilies, lay calm and gleaming amidst level pastures.

Involuntarily they arrested their steps, to gaze on the cheerful
landscape and inhale the balmy air. Meanwhile the Mayor came out from
the cottage porch, his wife leaning on his arm, and two of his younger
children bounding on before, with joyous faces, giving chase to a gaudy
butterfly which they had started from the woodbine.

Mrs. Hartopp had conceived a lively curiosity to see and judge for
herself of the objects of her liege lord's benevolent interest. She
shared, of course, the anxiety which formed the standing excitement
of all those who lived but for one godlike purpose, that of preserving
Josiah Hartopp from being taken in. But whenever the Mayor specially
wished to secure his wife's countenance to any pet project of his
own, and convince her either that he was not taken in, or that to be
discreetly taken in is in this world a very popular and sure mode
of getting up, he never failed to attain his end. That man was the
cunningest creature! As full of wiles and stratagems in order to get his
own way--in benevolent objects--as men who set up to be clever are for
selfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made good
woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a
shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she,
poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated,
absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness;
for in Hartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid
oppression, wholly irresistible. It w