"

"I am afraid we have no option but to march with the time; but when we
reach that stage when to march any farther is to march into old age, we
should not be sorry if time would be kind enough to stand still; and all
good doctors concur in advising us to do nothing to hurry him."

"There is no sign of old age in this country, sir; and thank Heaven we
are not standing still!"

"Grasshoppers never do; they are always hopping and jumping, and making
what they think 'progress,' till (unless they hop into the water and are
swallowed up prematurely by a carp or a frog) they die of the exhaustion
which hops and jumps unremitting naturally produce. May I ask you, Mrs.
Saunderson, for some of that rice-pudding?"

The farmer, who, though he did not quite comprehend Kenelm's
metaphorical mode of arguing, saw delightedly that his wise son looked
more posed than himself, cried with great glee, "Bob, my boy,--Bob, our
visitor is a little too much for you!"

"Oh, no," said Kenelm, modestly. "But I honestly think Mr. Bob would be
a wiser man, and a weightier man, and more removed from the grasshopper
state, if he would think less and eat more pudding."

When the supper was over the farmer offered Kenelm a clay pipe filled
with shag, which that adventurer accepted with his habitual resignation
to the ills of life; and the whole party, excepting Mrs. Saunderson,
strolled into the garden. Kenelm and Mr. Saunderson seated themselves
in the honeysuckle arbour: the girls and the advocate of progress stood
without among the garden flowers. It was a still and lovely night, the
moon at her full. The farmer, seated facing his hayfields, smoked on
placidly. Kenelm, at the third whiff, laid aside his pipe, and glanced
furtively at the three Graces. They formed a pretty group, all clustered
together near the silenced beehives, the two younger seated on the
grass strip that bordered the flower-beds, their arms over each other's
shoulders, the elder one standing behind them, with the moonlight
shining soft on her auburn hair.

Young Saunderson walked restlessly by himself to and fro the path of
gravel.

"It is a strange thing," ruminated Kenelm, "that girls are not
unpleasant to look at if you take them collectively,--two or three bound
up together; but if you detach any one of them from the bunch, the odds
are that she is as plain as a pikestaff. I wonder whether that bucolical
grasshopper, who is so enamoured of the hop and jump that he