me with her father and mother after her short
taste of the season's gaieties. It was pleasant to lean back in a corner
of the railway carriage and look at the rich Meadshire country, so
familiar to her, running past the window. She had not wanted to go home
particularly, but she was rather glad to be going home all the same.

The country in South Meadshire is worth looking at. There are
deep-grassed water-meadows, kept green by winding rivers; woods of beech
and oak; stretches of gorse and bracken; no hills to speak of, but
gentle rises, crowned sometimes by an old church, or a pleasant-looking
house, neither very old nor very new, very large nor very small. The big
houses, and there are a good many of them, lie for the most part in what
may be called by courtesy the valleys. You catch a glimpse of them
sometimes at a little distance from the line, which seems to have shown
some ingenuity in avoiding them, standing in wide, well-timbered parks,
or peeping from amongst thicker trees, with their court of farm and
church and clustered village, in dignified seclusion. For the rest,
there are picturesque hamlets; cottages with bright gardens; children,
and fluttering clothes-lines; pigs and donkeys and geese on the cropped
commons; a network of roads and country lanes; and everywhere a look of
smiling and contented well-being, which many an English county of higher
reputation for picturesque scenery might envy.

The inhabitants of South Meadshire will tell you that it is one of the
best counties for all-round sport. Game is preserved, but not
over-preserved, and the mixture of pasture and arable land and frequent
covert, while it does not tempt the fox-hunting Londoner, breeds stout
foxes for the pleasure of those who know every inch of it; and there is
enough grass, enough water, and stiff enough fences to try the skill of
the boldest, and to provide occasionally such a run as from its
comparative rarity accords a gratification unknown to the frequenter of
the shires. Big fish are sometimes caught in the clear streams of South
Meadshire, and they are caught by the people who own them, or by their
friends. For in this quiet corner of England the life of the hall and
the village still goes on unchanged. At the meets--on lawn, at
cross-road, or by covert-side--everybody knows everybody else, at least
by sight; neighbours shoot with one another and not with strangers; and
the small fry of the countryside get their share of what