these, when she was in her own domain, the whitest of aprons; while at
her waist was seen no fiddle-faddle /chatelaine/, with /breloques/ and
trumpery, but a good honest gold watch to mark the time, and a long pair
of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her flowers,--for she was a
great horticulturalist. When occasion needed, Mrs. Hazeldean could,
however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial raiment for a stout
riding-habit, of blue Saxony, and canter by her husband's side to see the
hounds throw off. Nay, on the days on which Mr. Hazeldean drove his
famous fast-trotting cob to the market town, it was rarely that you did
not see his wife on the left side of the gig. She cared as little as her
lord did for wind and weather, and in the midst of some pelting shower
her pleasant face peeped over the collar and capes of a stout
dreadnought, expanding into smiles and bloom as some frank rose, that
opens from its petals, and rejoices in the dews. It was easy to see that
the worthy couple had married for love; they were as little apart as they
could help it. And still, on the first of September, if the house was
not full of company which demanded her cares, Mrs. Hazeldean "stepped
out" over the stubbles by her husband's side, with as light a tread and
as blithe an eye as when, in the first bridal year, she had enchanted the
squire by her genial sympathy with his sports.

So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on the squire's
broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, and trying her best to
share her husband's enthusiasm for his own public-spirited patriotism, in
the renovation of the parish stocks. A little behind, with two fingers
resting on the thin arm of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima, the
orphan daughter of the squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent marriage
with a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at war with the
Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles the First respecting a right of way
to a small wood (or rather spring) of about an acre, through a piece of