bodily labour; and I regard it with
equal curiosity and respect. But if it would not offend you, I would
rather that, instead of the money, you had offered me some supper; for I
have tasted nothing but bread and water since the morning."

"You shall have the money and supper both, my lad," said the farmer,
cheerily. "And if you will stay and help till I have got in the hay, I
dare say my good woman can find you a better bed than you'll get in the
village inn; if, indeed, you can get one there at all."

"You are very kind. But before I accept your hospitality excuse one
question: have you any nieces about you?"

"Nieces!" echoed the farmer, mechanically thrusting his hands into his
breeches-pockets as if in search of something there, "nieces about me!
what do you mean? Be that a newfangled word for coppers?"

"Not for coppers, though perhaps for brass. But I spoke without
metaphor. I object to nieces upon abstract principle, confirmed by the
test of experience."

The farmer stared, and thought his new friend not quite so sound in his
mental as he evidently was in his physical conformation, but replied,
with a laugh, "Make yourself easy, then. I have only one niece, and she
is married to an iron-monger and lives in Exeter."

On entering the farmhouse, Kenelm's host conducted him straight into the
kitchen, and cried out, in a hearty voice, to a comely middle-aged dame,
who, with a stout girl, was intent on culinary operations, "Hulloa! old
woman, I have brought you a guest who has well earned his supper, for he
has done the work of two, and I have promised him a bed."

The farmer's wife turned sharply round. "He is heartily welcome to
supper. As to a bed," she said doubtfully, "I don't know." But here her
eyes settled on Kenelm; and there was something in his aspect so
unlike what she expected to see in an itinerant haymaker, that she
involuntarily dropped a courtesy, and resumed, with a change of tone,
"The gentleman shall have the guest-room: but it will take a little time
to get ready; you know, John, all the furniture is covered up."

"Well, wife, there will be leisure eno' for that. He don't want to go to
roost till he has supped."

"Certainly not," said Kenelm, sniffing a very agreeable odour.

"Where are the girls?" asked the farmer.

"They have been in these five minutes, and gone upstairs to tidy
themselves."

"What girls?" faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. "I thought
you said you had no