ckled my pack.

I "travel" in Tracts, edifying magazines, and books on the Holy Land;
but in Tracts especially. As Watteau painted the ladies and
cavaliers of Versailles so admirably, because he despised them, so I
will sell a Tract against any man alive. Also, if there be one kind
of Tract that I loathe more than another, it is the Pink Tract.
Paper of that colour is sacred to the Loves--to stolen kisses and
assignations--and to see it with a comminatory text tacked on at the
foot of the page turns my stomach. I have served in my time many
different masters, and mistresses; and it still pleases me, after
quitting their service, to recognise the distinction between their
dues. So it must have been the heat that made me select a Pink
Tract. I leant back with my head in the shadow to digest its crude
absurdity.

It was entitled, "_How infernally Hot!_" I doubt not the words were
put in the mouth of some sinner, and the moral dwelt on their literal
significance. But half-way down the first page sleep must have
descended on me: and I woke up to the sound of light footsteps.

_Pit-a-pat--pit-a-pat-a-pit-pat_. I lifted my head.

Two small children were coming along the road towards me,
hand-in-hand, through the heat--a boy and a girl; who, drawing near
and spying my long legs sprawling out into the dust, came to a stand,
finger in mouth.

"Hullo, my dears!" I called out, "what are you doing out in this
weather?"

The children stared at one another, and were silent. The girl was
about eight years old, wore a smart pink frock and sash, a big pink
sun-bonnet, and carried an apple with a piece bitten out. She seemed
a little lady; whereas the boy wore corduroys and a battered straw
hat, and was a clod. Both children were exceedingly dusty and hot in
the cheeks.

Finally, the girl disengaged her hand and stepped forward--

"If you please, sir, are you a clergyman?"

Now this confused me a good deal; for, to tell the truth, I had worn
a white tie in my younger days, before. . . So I sat up and asked why
she wished to know.

"Because we want to be married."

I drew a long breath, looked from her to the boy, and asked--

"Is that so?"

"She's wishful," answered he, nodding sulkily.

"Oho!" I thought; "Adam and Eve and the apple, complete. Do you love
each other?" I asked.

"I adore Billy," cried the little maid "he's the stable-boy at the
'Woolpack' in Blea-kirk--"

"So I am beginning to smell," I