twining brambles were here,--it was a wide, clean brick-paved
place chiefly possessed by a goodly company of promising fowls,
and a huge cart-horse. The horse was tied to his manger in an open
shed, and munched and munched with all the steadiness and goodwill
of the sailor's wife who offended Macbeth's first witch. Beyond
the farmyard was the farmhouse itself,--a long, low, timbered
building with a broad tiled roof supported by huge oaken rafters
and crowned with many gables,--a building proudly declaring itself
as of the days of Elizabeth's yeomen, and bearing about it the
honourable marks of age and long stress of weather. No such
farmhouses are built nowadays, for life has become with us less
than a temporary thing,--a coin to be spent rapidly as soon as
gained, too valueless for any interest upon it to be sought or
desired. In olden times it was apparently not considered such
cheap currency. Men built their homes to last not only for their
own lifetime, but for the lifetime of their children and their
children's children; and the idea that their children's children
might possibly fail to appreciate the strenuousness and worth of
their labours never entered their simple brains.

The farmyard was terminated at its other end by a broad stone
archway, which showed as in a semi-circular frame the glint of
scarlet geraniums in the distance, and in the shadow cast by this
embrasure was the small unobtrusive figure of a girl. She stood
idly watching the hens pecking at their food and driving away
their offspring from every chance of sharing bit or sup with
them,--and as she noted the greedy triumph of the strong over the
weak, the great over the small, her brows drew together in a
slight frown of something like scorn. Yet hers was not a face that
naturally expressed any of the unkind or harsh emotions. It was