vertaken them, and come sharp round corners on to them, but I never
heard them speak to one another. I have asked the young men themselves
whether they ever said anything to their sweethearts, and those young
men have answered, "No; that they didn't know as they did." So that I
am inclined to believe that they are contented with that silent
utterance of the heart which is so superior to the silly whisperings
one hears on dark ottomans in drawing-rooms.

But the Vicar had a strong dislike to lovers' walks. He was a practical
man, and had studied parish statistics for some years, so that his
opinion is entitled to respect. He used to ask, why an honest girl
should not receive her lover at her father's house, or in broad
daylight, and many other impertinent questions which we won't go into,
but which many a west-country parson has asked before, and never got an
answer to.

Of all pleasant places in the parish, surely one of the pleasantest for
a meeting of this kind was the old oak at the end of Hawker's
plantation, where George met Nelly a night we know of. So quiet and
lonely, and such pleasant glimpses down long oaken glades, with a
bright carpet of springing fern. Surely there will be a couple here
this sweet May evening.

So there is! Walking this way too! George Hawker is one of them; but we
can't see who the other is. Who should it be but Mary, though, with
whom he should walk, with his arm round her waist talking so
affectionately. But see, she raises her head. Why! that is not Mary.
That is old Jewel's dowdy, handsome, brazen-faced grandaughter.

"Now I'm going home to supper, Miss Jenny," he says. "So you pack off,
or you'll have your amiable mother asking after you. By-the-bye, your
sister's going to be married, ain't she?"

He referred to her eldest sister--the one that the Vicar and the Doctor
saw nursing a baby the night that old Jewel died.

"Yes," replied the girl. "Her man's going to have her at last; that's
his baby she's got, you know; and it seems he'll sooner make her work
for keeping it, than pay for it hisself. So they're going to be
married; better late than never."

George left her and went in; into the gloomy old kitchen, now darkening
rapidly. There sat Madge before the fire, in her favourite attitude,
with her chin on her hand and her elbow on her knee.

"Well, old woman," said he, "where's the old man?"

"Away to Colyton fair," she answered.

"I hope he'll have the sense to stay the