bed feet, the sun had
mastered the clouds, and was shining through the boughs of the tall elms
that made a deep nest for the gardener's cottage--turning the raindrops
into diamonds, and inviting the nasturtium flowers creeping over the
porch and low-thatched roof to lift up their flame-coloured heads once
more. The rooks were cawing with many-voiced monotony, apparently--by a
remarkable approximation to human intelligence--finding great
conversational resources in the change of weather. The mossy turf,
studded with the broad blades of marsh-loving plants, told that Mr.
Bates's nest was rather damp in the best of weather; but he was of
opinion that a little external moisture would hurt no man who was not
perversely neglectful of that obvious and providential antidote,
rum-and-water.

Caterina loved this nest. Every object in it, every sound that haunted
it, had been familiar to her from the days when she had been carried
thither on Mr. Bates's arm, making little cawing noises to imitate the
rooks, clapping her hands at the green frogs leaping in the moist grass,
and fixing grave eyes on the gardener's fowls cluck-clucking under their
pens. And now the spot looked prettier to her than ever; it was so out of
the way of Miss Assher, with her brilliant beauty, and personal claims,
and small civil remarks. She thought Mr. Bates would not be come into his
dinner yet, so she would sit down and wait for him.

But she was mistaken. Mr. Bates was seated in his arm-chair, with his
pocket-handkerchief thrown over his face, as the most eligible mode of
passing away those superfluous hours between meals when the weather
drives a man in-doors. Roused by the furious barking of his chained
bulldog, he descried his little favourite approaching, and forthwith
presented himself at the doorway, looking disproportionately tall
compared with the height of his cottage. The bulldog, meanwhile, unbent
from the severity of his official demeanour, and commenced a friendly
interchange of ideas with Rupert.

Mr. Bates's hair was now grey, but his frame was none the less stalwart,
and his face looked all the redder, making an artistic contrast with the
deep blue of his cotton neckerchief, and of his linen apron twisted into
a girdle round his waist.

'Why, dang my boottons, Miss Tiny,' he exclaimed, 'hoo coom ye to coom
oot dabblin' your faet laike a little Muscovy duck, sich a day as this?
Not but what ai'm delaighted to sae ye. Here Hesther,' he