overlooking the field through which the public footpath leads. The
porch of this farmhouse is covered by a rose-tree; and the little
garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned
herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only
druggist's shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and
wild luxuriance--roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary,
pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and
indiscriminate order. This farmhouse and garden are within a
hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large
pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and
blackthorn; and near this stile, on the further side, there runs a
tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue
sweet violet on the grassy hedge bank.

I do not know whether it was on a holiday granted by the masters, or
a holiday seized in right of Nature and her beautiful spring time by
the workmen, but one afternoon (now ten or a dozen years ago) these
fields were much thronged. It was an early May evening--the April
of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the
round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the
dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more
threatening. The softness of the day tempted forth the young green
leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows,
which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water
below, were now of that tender grey-green which blends so delicately
with the spring harmony of colours.

Groups of merry and somewhat loud-talking girls, whose ages might
range from twelve to twenty, came by with a buoyant step. They were
most of them factory girls, and wore the usual out-of-doors dress of