"Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric; very
clever people always are!" replied Miss Matty.

When Mr Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but
the two elder ladies were afraid of damp, and dirt, and had only
very unbecoming calashes to put on over their caps; so they
declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he
was obliged to take to see after his men. He strode along, either
wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by his
pipe--and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me with
a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him; and, as some tree or
cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures, struck him, he quoted
poetry to himself, saying it out loud in a grand sonorous voice,
with just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We
came upon an old cedar tree, which stood at one end of the house -


"The cedar spreads his dark-green layers of shade."


"Capital term--'layers!' Wonderful man!" I did not know whether
he was speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting
"wonderful," although I knew nothing about it, just because I was
tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent.

He turned sharp round. "Ay! you may say 'wonderful.' Why, when I
saw the review of his poems in Blackwood, I set off within an hour,
and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the
way) and ordered them. Now, what colour are ash-buds in March?"