little girl, dark-haired and very wonderful, with a wealthy softness on
her, as if she must have her own way. I could not look at her for two
glances, and she did not look at me for one, being such a little child,
and busy with the hedges. But in the honourable place sate a handsome
lady, very warmly dressed, and sweetly delicate of colour. And close
to her was a lively child, two or it may be three years old, bearing a
white cockade in his hat, and staring at all and everybody. Now, he saw
Peggy, and took such a liking to her, that the lady his mother--if so
she were--was forced to look at my pony and me. And, to tell the truth,
although I am not of those who adore the high folk, she looked at us
very kindly, and with a sweetness rarely found in the women who milk the
cows for us.

Then I took off my cap to the beautiful lady, without asking wherefore;
and she put up her hand and kissed it to me, thinking, perhaps, that
I looked like a gentle and good little boy; for folk always called me
innocent, though God knows I never was that. But now the foreign lady,
or lady's maid, as it might be, who had been busy with little dark eyes,
turned upon all this going-on, and looked me straight in the face. I was
about to salute her, at a distance, indeed, and not with the nicety she
had offered to me, but, strange to say, she stared at my eyes as if she
had never seen me before, neither wished to see me again. At this I was
so startled, such things beings out of my knowledge, that I startled
Peggy also with the muscle of my legs, and she being fresh from stable,
and the mire scraped off with cask-hoop, broke away so suddenly that I
could do no more than turn round and lower my cap, now five months old,
to the beautiful lady. Soon I overtook John Fry, and asked him all about
them, and how it was that we had missed their starting from the hostel.
But John would never talk much till after a gallon of cider; and all
that I could win out of him was that they were 'murdering Papishers,'