of flowers what she
painted, and there was a lot more sold when they had to give up the
farm. But Miss Joliffe wouldn't part with the biggest of 'em, though
there was many would ha' liked to buy it. No, she kep' that one, and
has it by her to this day--a picture so big as a signboard, all covered
with flowers most beautiful."

"Yes, I've seen that," Westray put in; "it's in my room at Miss
Joliffe's."

He said nothing about its ugliness, or that he meant to banish it, not
wishing to wound the narrator's artistic susceptibilities, or to
interrupt a story which began to interest him in spite of himself.

"Well, to be sure!" said the clerk, "it used to hang in the best parlour
at Wydcombe over the sideboard; I seed'n there when I was a boy, and my
mother was helping spring-clean up at the farm. `Look, Tom,' my mother
said to me, `did 'ee ever see such flowers? and such a pritty
caterpillar a-going to eat them!' You mind, a green caterpillar down in
the corner."

Westray nodded, and the clerk went on:

"`Well, Mrs Joliffe,' says my mother to Sophia, `I never want for to
see a more beautiful picture than that.' And Sophia laughed, and said
my mother know'd a good picture when she saw one. Some folks 'ud stand
her out, she said, that 'tweren't worth much, but she knew she could get
fifty or a hundred pound or more for't any day she liked to sell, if she
took it to the right people. _Then_ she'd soon have the laugh of those
that said it were only a daub; and with that she laughed herself, for
she were always laughing and always jolly.

"Michael were well pleased with his strapping wife, and used to like to
see the people stare when he drove her into Cullerne Market in the high
cart, and hear her crack jokes with the farmers what they passed on the
way. Very proud he was of her, and prouder still when one Saturday he
stood all comers glasses round at the Blandamer, and bid 'em drink to a
pritty little lass what his wife had given him. Now he'd got a brace of
'em, he said; for he'd kep' that other little boy what Sophia brought
when she married him, and treated the child for all the world as if he
was his very son.

"So 'twas for a year or two, till the practice-camp was put up on
Wydcombe Down. I mind that summer well, for 'twere a fearful hot one,
and Joey Garland and me taught ourselves to swim in the sheep-wash down
in Mayo's Meads. And there was the white tents all up the hillside, and
the brass band a-