editions in search of the picturesque, or whatever else she
might take it into her head to look for; and when she issued orders
for a day among the hills in a certain month of August, which had been
a specially fine month in point of weather, every one was pleased.
But John and Thomas found it nearly as hard work climbing with the
luncheon-basket in the heat of the midsummer sun as it was when they
climbed to the same elevation in midwinter; only they did not slip
back so fast, nor did they feel that they were art and part in a
"daftlike" thing.

"Here," said Lady Arthur, raising her glass to her lips--"here is to
the memory of the Romans, on whose dust we are resting."

"Amen!" said Mr. Eildon; "but I am afraid you don't find their dust a
very soft resting-place: they were always a hard people, the Romans."

"They were a people I admire," said Lady Arthur. "If they had not been
called away by bad news from home, if they had been able to stay, our
civilization might have been a much older thing than it is.--What do
_you_ think, John?" she said, addressing her faithful servitor. "Less
than a thousand years ago all that stretch of country that we see so
richly cultivated and studded with cozy farm-houses was brushwood
and swamp, with a handful of savage inhabitants living in wigwams and
dressing in skins."

"It may be so," said John--"no doubt yer leddyship kens best--but I
have this to say: if they were savages they had the makin' o' men in
them. Naebody'll gar me believe that the stock yer leddyship and me
cam o' was na a capital gude stock."

"All right, John," said Mr. Eildon, "if you include me."

"It was a long time to take, surely," said Alice--"a thousand years to
bring the country from brushwood and swamp to corn and burns confined
to their beds,"

"Nature is never in a hurry, Alice," replied Lady Arthur.

"But she is always busy in a wonderfully quiet way," said Miss
Adamson. "Whenever man begins to work he makes a noise, but no one
hears the corn grow or the leaves burst their sheaths: even the clouds
move with noiseless grace."

"The clouds are what no one can understand yet, I suppose," said Mr.
Eildon, "but they don't always look as if butter wouldn't melt in
their mouths, as they are doing to-day. What do you say to thunder?"

"That is an exception: Nature does all her best work quietly."

"So does man," remarked George Eildon.

"Well, I dare say you are right, after all," said Miss Adamson, w