l,
familiar surroundings.

"Ah!" he broke out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows: "and
that field now--backed by the downs--with the rain-cloud brooding over
it,--that's all David Cox--every bit of it!"

"That field belongs to Farmer Larkin," I explained politely, for of
course he could not be expected to know. "I'll take you over to Farmer
Cox's to-morrow, if he's a friend of yours; but there's nothing to see
there."

Edward, who was hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if to
say, "What sort of lunatic have we got here?"

"It has the true pastoral character, this country of yours," went on our
enthusiast: "with just that added touch in cottage and farmstead,
relics of a bygone art, which makes our English landscape so divine, so
unique!"

Really this grasshopper was becoming a burden. These familiar fields and
farms, of which we knew every blade and stick, had done nothing that
I knew of to be bespattered with adjectives in this way. I had never
thought of them as divine, unique, or anything else. They were--well,
they were just themselves, and there was an end of it. Despairingly I
jogged Edward in the ribs, as a sign to start rational conversation, but
he only grinned and continued obdurate.

"You can see the house now," I remarked, presently; "and that's Selina,
chasing the donkey in the paddock,--or is it the donkey chasing Selina?
I can't quite make out; but it's THEM, anyhow."

Needless to say, he exploded with a full charge of adjectives.
"Exquisite!" he rapped out; "so mellow and harmonious! and so entirely
in keeping!" (I could see from Edward's face that he was thinking who
ought to be in keeping.) "Such possibilities of romance, now, in those
old gables!"

"If you mean the garrets," I said, "there's a lot of old furniture
in them; and one is generally full of apples; and the bats get
in sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about till we go up with
hair-brushes and things and drive 'em out; but there's nothing else in
them that I know of."

"Oh, but there must be more than bats," he cried. "Don't tell me there
are no ghosts. I shall be deeply disappointed if there aren't any
ghosts."

I did not think it worth while to reply, feeling really unequal to this
sort of conversation; besides, we were nearing the house, when my task
would be ended. Aunt Eliza met us at the door, and in the cross-fire of
adjectives that ensued--both of them talking at once, as grown-up folk
have a habit