"O dear, no ma'am," I replied; "indeed I'm not _deaf_," with a peculiar
emphasis on this last word.

"_No_? Well, I do declare then, I've been haxing you to admire this fine
country for _this_ ten minutes;--only look! 'tis a vast deal more bootiful
than the road I travelled t'other day!"

So, to please the honest woman, I looked at her "fine country," and beheld
on my side the road (for we were sitting at cross corners) a stunted
hedge-row, inclosing a field or two of stubble; and on hers, a sear,
dismal heath, whereupon were marshalled, in irregular array, a few
miserable, brown furze bushes; amongst which, a meagre, shaggy ass, more
miserable still, with his hind legs logged and chained, was endeavouring
to pick up a scanty subsistence. What the road of the other day could have
been, it surpassed even my capacity, with this specimen of "the bootiful"
before me, to surmise; but my companion was evidently one of those
enviable individuals, whose ignorance is indeed their happiness, or whose
imagination supplies the deficiencies of bare reality.

Shortly afterwards we took up another passenger--a "_lady_" also--whose
figure was youthful, and whose face, perhaps, was not otherwise; but as
she was weeping bitterly, her features were concealed by a white cambric
_mouchoir_ from my curious gaze. Poor creature! Had she parted from a
lover?--a parent?--a child? Was she a reduced lady, quitting, for the
first time and the last, her paternal home, to seek, by the exertion of
her talents, or the labour of her hands, a precarious subsistence in the
cold, wide world? Had she hurried from the bed of death? or, did she
merely indulge in the soft sentimental sorrow, induced by Colburn's, or
Longman's, or Newman's last novel? Alas! the fair mourner informed us not.