the orchard, the beautiful orchard, with its
glorious gardens of pink and white, its pearly pear-blossoms and coral
apple-buds. What a flush of bloom it is! How brightly delicate
it appears, thrown into strong relief by the dark house and the
weather-stained barn, in this soft evening light! The very grass is
strewed with the snowy petals of the pear and the cherry. And there sits
Mrs. Allen, feeding her poultry, with her three little grand-daughters
from London, pretty fairies from three years old to five (only
two-and-twenty months elapsed between the birth of the eldest and the
youngest) playing round her feet.

Mrs. Allen, my dear Mrs. Allen, has been that rare thing a beauty, and
although she be now an old woman I had almost said that she is so
still. Why should I not say so? Nobleness of feature and sweetness of
expression are surely as delightful in age as in youth. Her face and
figure are much like those which are stamped indelibly on the memory of
every one who ever saw that grand specimen of woman--Mrs. Siddons. The
outline of Mrs. Allen's face is exactly the same; but there is more
softness, more gentleness, a more feminine composure in the eye and in
the smile. Mrs. Allen never played Lady Macbeth. Her hair, almost as
black as at twenty, is parted on her large fair forehead, and combed
under her exquisitely neat and snowy cap; a muslin neckerchief, a grey
stuff gown and a white apron complete the picture.

There she sits under an old elder-tree which flings its branches over
her like a canopy, whilst the setting sun illumines her venerable figure
and touches the leaves with an emerald light; there she sits, placid and
smiling, with her spectacles in her hand and a measure of barley on
her lap, into which the little girls are dipping their chubby hands
and scattering the corn amongst the ducks and chickens with unspeakable
glee. But those ingrates the poultry don't seem so pleased and thankful
as they ought to be; they mistrust their young feeders. All domestic
animals dislike children, partly from an instinctive fear of their
tricks and their thoughtlessness; partly, I suspect, from jealousy.
Jealousy seems a strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of
the basse cour,--but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock
(evidently a favourite), who sidles up to his old mistress with an
air half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from the
barley-corns which Annie is flinging towar