for her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the scent of
the ripe corn is in the air, the cows stoop under the elm trees,
looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomson's pretty pictures, dappled
and brown, with delicate legs and horns. We pass very few people, a
baby lugged along in its cart, and accompanied by its brothers and
sisters; a fox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the
phaeton stops abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the
coachman, pointing with his whip, says, 'That is "The Mitford,"
ma'am.--That's where Miss Mitford used to live!'

Was that all? I saw two or three commonplace houses skirting the
dusty road, I saw a comfortable public-house with an elm tree, and
beside it another grey unpretentious little house, with a slate roof
and square walls, and an inscription, 'The Mitford,' painted over
the doorway. . . .

I had been expecting I knew not what; a spire, a pump, a green, a
winding street: my preconceived village in the air had immediately
to be swept into space, and in its stead, behold the inn with its
sign-post, and these half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to
one square pattern! So this was all! this was 'our village' of
which the author had written so charmingly! These were the sights
the kind eyes had dwelt upon, seeing in them all, the soul of hidden
things, rather than dull bricks and slates. Except for one memory,
Three Mile Cross would seem to be one of the dullest and most
uninteresting of country places. . . .

But we have Miss Mitford's own description. 'The Cross is not a
borough, thank Heaven, either rotten or independent. The
inhabitants are quiet, peaceable