ut let me the plunder forbear,
She will say--'

'Hollo, I'll give you a shilling for 'em!' was the unlooked-for
conclusion, causing her to start aside with a slight scream, as there
stood beside her a stout, black-eyed, round-faced lad, his ruddy cheeks
and loutish air showing more rusticity than agreed with his keen, saucy
expression, and mechanic's dress.

'So that's what you call beating a mat,' said he, catching it from her
hands, and mimicking the tender clasp of her little fingers. 'D'ye
think it's alive, that you use it so gingerly? Look here! Give it him
well!' as he made it resound against the tree, and emit a whirlwind of
dust. 'Lay it into him with some jolly good song fit to fetch a stroke
home with! Why, I heard my young Lord say, when Shakspeare was a
butcher, he used to make speeches at the calves, as if they was for a
sacrifice, or ever he could lift a knife to 'em.'

'Shakspeare! He as wrote Romeo and Juliet, and all that! He a
butcher! Why, he was a poet!' cried the girl, indignantly.

'If you know better than Lord Fitzjocelyn, you may!' said the boy.

'I couldn't have thought it!' sighed the maiden.

'It's the best of it!' cried the lad, eagerly. 'Why, Charlotte, don't
ye see, he rose hisself. Anybody may rise hisself as has a mind to it!'

'Yes, I've read that in books said Charlotte. 'You can, men can, Tom,
if you would but educate yourself like Edmund! in the _Old English
Baron_. But then, you know whose son you are. There can't be no
catastrophe--'

'I don't want none,' said Tom. 'We are all equal by birth, so the
orator proves without a doubt, and we'll show it one of these days. A
rare lady I'll make of you yet, Charlotte Arnold.'

'O hush, Tom, I can never be a lady--and I can't stand dawdling
here--nor you neither. 'Tisn't right to want to be out of our station,
though I do wish I lived in an old castle, where the maidens worked
tapestry, and heard minstrels, never had no stairs to scour. Come, give
me my mats, and thank you kindly!'

'I'll take 'em in,' said Tom, shouldering them. ''Tis breakfast-hour,
so I thought I'd just run up and ax you when my young Lord goes up to
Oxford.

'He is gone,' said Charlotte; 'he was here yesterday to take leave of
missus. Mr. James goes later--'

'Gone!' cried Tom. 'If he didn't say he'd come and see me at Mr.
Smith's!'

'Did you want to speak to him?'

'I wanted to see him particular. There's a thing lays heavy on my
min