Traveller.

"Put it at five mile," returned the Landlord.

"Well! When I have done my breakfast," said the Traveller, "I'll go
there. I came over here this morning, to find it out and see it."

"Many does," observed the Landlord.

The conversation passed, in the Midsummer weather of no remote year of
grace, down among the pleasant dales and trout-streams of a green English
county. No matter what county. Enough that you may hunt there, shoot
there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown Roman roads there, open
ancient barrows there, see many a square mile of richly cultivated land
there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold peasantry, their country's
pride, who will tell you (if you want to know) how pastoral housekeeping
is done on nine shillings a week.

Mr. Traveller sat at his breakfast in the little sanded parlour of the
Peal of Bells village alehouse, with the dew and dust of an early walk
upon his shoes--an early walk by road and meadow and coppice, that had
sprinkled him bountifully with little blades of grass, and scraps of new
hay, and with leaves both young and old, and with other such fragrant
tokens of the freshness and wealth of summer. The window through which
the landlord had concentrated his gaze upon vacancy was shaded, because
the morning sun was hot and bright on the village street. The village
street was like most other village streets: wide for its height, silent
for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. The quietest little
dwellings with the largest of window-shutters (to shut up Nothing as
carefully as if it were the Mint, or the Bank of England) had called in