ot see that her garden
drained the farm already, distracted the farm, and most evidently
impoverished him. She could not understand, that in permitting her, while
he sweated fruitlessly, to give herself up to the occupation of a lady,
he had followed the promptings of his native kindness, and certainly not
of his native wisdom. That she should deem herself `best man' of the two,
and suggest his stamping his name to such an opinion before the world,
was an outrage.

Mrs. Fleming was failing in health. On that plea, with the solemnity
suited to the autumn of her allotted days, she persuaded her husband to
advertise for an assistant, who would pay a small sum of money to learn
sound farming, and hear arguments in favour of the Corn Laws. To please
her, he threw seven shillings away upon an advertisement, and laughed
when the advertisement was answered, remarking that he doubted much
whether good would come of dealings with strangers. A young man, calling
himself Robert Armstrong, underwent a presentation to the family. He paid
the stipulated sum, and was soon enrolled as one of them. He was of a
guardsman's height and a cricketer's suppleness, a drinker of water, and
apparently the victim of a dislike of his species; for he spoke of the
great night-lighted city with a horror that did not seem to be an
estimable point in him, as judged by a pair of damsels for whom the
mysterious metropolis flew with fiery fringes through dark space, in
their dreams.

In other respects, the stranger was well thought of, as being handsome
and sedate. He talked fondly of one friend that he had, an officer in the
army, which was considered pardonably vain. He did not reach to the ideal
of his sex which had been formed by the sisters; but Mrs. Fleming,
trusting to her divination of his sex's character, whispered a mother's
word about him to her husband a little while before her death.

It was her prayer to heaven that she might save a doctor's bill. She
died, without lingering illness, in her own beloved month of June; the
roses of her tending at the open window, and a soft breath floating up to
her from the garden. On the foregoing May-day, she had sat on the green
that fronted the iron gateway, when Dahlia and Rhoda dressed the children
of the village in garlands, and crowned the fairest little one queen of
May: a sight that revived in Mrs. Fleming's recollection the time of her
own eldest and fairest taking homage, shy in her white smock a