ited boy to bolder ventures. Is not that a
pretty picture? And they are such a handsome family too, the Brookers.
I do not know that there is any gipsy blood, but there is the true
gipsy complexion, richly brown, with cheeks and lips so red, black
hair curling close to their heads in short crisp rings, white shining
teeth--and such eyes!--That sort of beauty entirely eclipses your mere
roses and lilies. Even Lizzy, the prettiest of fair children, would look
poor and watery by the side of Willy Brooker, the sober little personage
who is picking up the apples with his small chubby hands, and filling
the basket so orderly, next to his father the most useful man in the
field. 'Willy!' He hears without seeing; for we are quite hidden by
the high bank, and a spreading hawthorn bush that overtops it, though
between the lower branches and the grass we have found a convenient
peep-hole. 'Willy!' The voice sounds to him like some fairy dream, and
the black eyes are raised from the ground with sudden wonder, the long
silky eyelashes thrown back till they rest on the delicate brow, and a
deeper blush is burning on those dark cheeks, and a smile is dimpling
about those scarlet lips. But the voice is silent now, and the little
quiet boy, after a moment's pause, is gone coolly to work again. He
is indeed a most lovely child. I think some day or other he must marry
Lizzy; I shall propose the match to their respective mammas. At present
the parties are rather too young for a wedding--the intended bridegroom
being, as I should judge, six, or thereabout, and the fair bride
barely five,--but at least we might have a betrothment after the royal
fashion,--there could be no harm in that. Miss Lizzy, I have no doubt,
would be as demure and coquettish as if ten winters more had gone over
her head, and poor Willy would open his innocent black eyes, and wonder
what was going forward. They would be the very Oberon and Titania of the
village, the fairy king and queen.

*An almost equally interesting account of that very peculiar and
interesting scenery, may be found in The Maid of La Vendee, an English
novel, remarkable for its simplicity and truth of painting, written by
Mrs. Le Noir, the daughter of Christopher Smart, an inheritrix of much
of his talent. Her works deserve to be better known.

**'Deedily,'--I am not quite sure that this word is good English; but it
is genuine Hampshire, and is used by the most correct of female writers,
Miss Aust