"Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so
interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by,
to write to Coke about his sheep."

"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor
Ponto and Dash."

The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles could have
known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work
on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife
as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.

From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old friend
the vicar,--the same day, the same hour. Here also the scene is without
doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are playing at
hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding gravel-walks
from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated
in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden.
The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had
just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to
look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His
wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a
little aside, not to obstruct the view.

"It does one's heart good to see them," said the vicar, "little dears!"

"Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," observed Mrs.
Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.