ven away not only by the fair
lady, but even by his old companions--is, so to say, sent to Coventry.
Of her two permitted followers, the yellow gentleman, Saladin by name,
is decidedly the favourite. He is, indeed, May's shadow, and will walk
with me whether I choose or not. It is quite impossible to get rid of
him unless by discarding Miss May also;--and to accomplish a walk in the
country without her, would be like an adventure of Don Quixote without
his faithful 'squire Sancho.

So forth we set, May and I, and Saladin and the brindle; May and myself
walking with the sedateness and decorum befitting our sex and age (she
is five years old this grass, rising six)--the young things, for the
soldan and the brindle are (not meaning any disrespect) little better
than puppies, frisking and frolicking as best pleased them.

Our route lay for the first part along the sheltered quiet lanes which
lead to our old habitation; a way never trodden by me without peculiar
and homelike feelings, full of the recollections, the pains and
pleasures, of other days. But we are not to talk sentiment now;--even
May would not understand that maudlin language. We must get on. What
a wintry hedgerow this is for the eighteenth of April! Primrosy to be
sure, abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth,--but so bare,
so leafless, so cold! The wind whistles through the brown boughs as
in winter. Even the early elder shoots, which do make an approach to
springiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the woodbine, which
have also ventured to peep forth, are of a sad purple, frost-bitten,
like a dairymaid's elbows on a snowy morning. The very birds, in this
season of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable, and their
nests!--'Oh, Saladin! come away from the hedge! Don't you see that what
puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast's nest?
Don't you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don't you hear the poor hen
calling as it were for help? Come here this moment, sir!' And by good
luck Saladin (who for a paynim has tolerable qualities) comes, before
he has touched the nest, or before his playmate the brindle, the less
manageable of the two, has espied it.

Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge, where the common, with
its clear stream winding between clumps of elms, assumes so park-like
an appearance. Who is this approaching so slowly and majestically, this
square bundle of petticoat and cloak, this road-waggon o