bramble bushes, and sprinkling the dust over the previously glossy surface
of the newly fallen horse chestnuts. Two ladies, elegantly dressed, lounge
in the carriage with that graceful idleness--that indifferent
indolence--only to be acquired in an atmosphere of luxury. Before they
pass out of sight round another turn of the road it is possible to observe
that one at least possesses hair of the fashionable hue, and a complexion
delicately brilliant--whether wholly natural or partly aided by art. The
other must be pronounced a shade less rich in the colours of youth, but is
perhaps even more expensively dressed. An experienced observer would at
once put them down as mother and daughter, as, indeed, they are.

The polished spokes of the wheels glitter in the sun, the hoofs of the
high-stepping pair beat the firm road in regular cadence, and smoothly the
carriage rolls on till the brown beech at the corner hides it. But a sense
of wealth, of social station, and refinement--strange and in strong
contrast to the rustic scene--lingers behind, like a faint odour of
perfume. There are the slow teams pulling stolidly at the ploughs--they
were stopped, of course, for the carters to stare at the equipage; there
are the wheat ricks; yonder a lone farmstead, and black cattle grazing in
the pasture. Surely the costly bays, whose hoofs may even now be heard,
must belong to the lordly owner of these broad acres--this undulating
landscape of grass and stubble, which is not beautiful but evidently
fertile!

A very brief inquiry at the adjacent market town disposes of this natural
conclusion. It is the carriage of a tenant farmer--but what a tenant! The
shopkeepers here are eloquent, positively gratefully eloquent, in the
praise of his wife and daughter. Customers!--no such customers had been
known in the old borough from time immemorial. The tradesman as he speaks
involuntarily pulls out his till, glances in, and shuts it up with a