and aspen! and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and wild
scabious, or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-rose! Here
is little Dolly Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red
as a real rose, tottering up the path to meet her father. And here
is the carroty-poled urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and
singing 'Home! sweet Home!' at the top of his voice; and then, when
the notes prove too high for him, continuing the air in a whistle,
until he has turned the impassable corner; then taking up again the
song and the words, 'Home! sweet Home!' and looking as if he felt
their full import, ploughboy though he be. And so he does; for he
is one of a large, an honest, a kind, and an industrious family,
where all goes well, and where the poor ploughboy is sure of finding
cheerful faces and coarse comforts--all that he has learned to
desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly contented as George
Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-match!--all his wants satisfied
in 'home! sweet home!'

Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brooke's great
bean-field, and crying the 'Harvest Home!' in a chorus, before which
all other sounds--the song, the scolding, the gunnery--fade away,
and become faint echoes. A pleasant noise is that! though, for
one's ears' sake, one makes some haste to get away from it. And
here, in happy time, is that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad
pathway, its tangled dingles, its nuts and its honeysuckles;--and,
carrying away a faggot of those sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah
Bint's: of whom, and of whose doings, we shall say more another
time.

NOTE.--Poor Dash is also dead. We did not keep him long, indeed I
believe that he died of the transition from starvation to good feed,