Ah! there is Mr. Allen in the orchard, the beautiful orchard, with
its glorious gardens of pink and white, its pearly pear-blossoms and
coral apple-buds. What a flush of bloom it is! How brightly
delicate it appears, thrown into strong relief by the dark house and
the weather-stained barn, in this soft evening light! The very
grass is strewed with the snowy petals of the pear and the cherry.
And there sits Mrs. Allen, feeding her poultry, with her three
little grand-daughters from London, pretty fairies from three years
old to five (only two-and-twenty months elapsed between the birth of
the eldest and the youngest) playing round her feet.

Mrs. Allen, my dear Mrs. Allen, has been that rare thing a beauty,
and although she be now an old woman I had almost said that she is
so still. Why should I not say so? Nobleness of feature and
sweetness of expression are surely as delightful in age as in youth.
Her face and figure are much like those which are stamped indelibly
on the memory of every one who ever saw that grand specimen of
woman--Mrs. Siddons. The outline of Mrs. Allen's face is exactly
the same; but there is more softness, more gentleness, a more
feminine composure in the eye and in the smile. Mrs. Allen never
played Lady Macbeth. Her hair, almost as black as at twenty, is
parted on her large fair forehead, and combed under her exquisitely
neat and snowy cap; a muslin neckerchief, a grey stuff gown and a
white apron complete the picture.

There she sits under an old elder-tree which flings its branches
over her like a canopy, whilst the setting sun illumines her
venerable figure and touches the leaves with an emerald light; there
she sits, placid and smiling, with her spectacles in her hand and a
measure of barley on her lap, into which the little girls are