Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge, where the common,
with its clear stream winding between clumps of elms, assumes so
park-like an appearance. Who is this approaching so slowly and
majestically, this square bundle of petticoat and cloak, this
road-waggon of a woman? It is, it must be Mrs. Sally Mearing, the
completest specimen within my knowledge of farmeresses (may I be
allowed that innovation in language?) as they were. It can be
nobody else.

Mrs. Sally Mearing, when I first became acquainted with her,
occupied, together with her father (a superannuated man of ninety),
a large farm very near our former habitation. It had been anciently
a great manor-farm or court-house, and was still a stately,
substantial building, whose lofty halls and spacious chambers gave
an air of grandeur to the common offices to which they were applied.
Traces of gilding might yet be seen on the panels which covered the
walls, and on the huge carved chimney-pieces which rose almost to
the ceilings; and the marble tables and the inlaid oak staircase
still spoke of the former grandeur of the court. Mrs. Sally
corresponded well with the date of her mansion, although she
troubled herself little with its dignity. She was thoroughly of the
old school, and had a most comfortable contempt for the new: rose
at four in winter and summer, breakfasted at six, dined at eleven in
the forenoon, supped at five, and was regularly in bed before eight,
except when the hay-time or the harvest imperiously required her to
sit up till sunset, a necessity to which she submitted with no very
good grace. To a deviation from these hours, and to the modern
iniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings, and muslin
handkerchiefs (Mrs. Sally herself always wore check, black worsted,
and a sort of yellow compound which she was wont to call 'susy'),