of carts, waggons, and return chaises. There are two carts there now,
and mine host is serving them with beer in his eternal red waistcoat. He
is a thriving man and a portly, as his waistcoat attests, which has been
twice let out within this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife,
a hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village; not so pretty
as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far less elegant, but ten times
as fine; all curl-papers in the morning, like a porcupine, all curls in
the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and
more lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for town than country; and
to do her justice, she has a consciousness of that fitness, and turns
her steps townward as often as she can. She is gone to B---- to-day with
her last and principal lover, a recruiting sergeant--a man as tall as
Sergeant Kite, and as impudent. Some day or other he will carry off Miss
Phoebe.

In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden-wall, belonging to a
house under repair:--the white house opposite the collar-maker's shop,
with four lime-trees before it, and a waggon-load of bricks at the door.
That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-meaning, whimsical person
who lives about a mile off. He has a passion for brick and mortar, and,
being too wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself with
altering and re-altering, improving and re-improving, doing and undoing
here. It is a perfect Penelope's web. Carpenters and bricklayers have
been at work for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand and
wonder whether anything has really been done. One exploit in last June
was, however, by no means equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the
limes shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was not a creature in
the house but the workmen), so he had all the leaves stripped from every
tree. There they stood, poor miserable skeletons, as bare as Christmas
under the glowing midsummer sun. Nature revenged herself, in her own
sweet and gracious manner; fresh leaves sprang out, and at nearly
Christmas the foliage was as brilliant as when the outrage was
committed.

Next door lives a carpenter, 'famed ten miles round, and worthy all his
fame,'--few cabinet-makers surpass him, with his excellent wife, and
their little daughter Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village,
a child three years old according to the register, but six in size and
strength and intellect, i