School (for to Sunday School he sometimes went) he
saw one of the fairest creatures he had ever read about either in the
Bible or elsewhere! It was a very strange thing she should be so
different from everybody else: not even the clergyman's daughters--no,
nor the Squire's daughters, for the matter of that--looked half so nice
as pretty Polly Sweetlove, the housemaid at the Vicar's.

"Now look at that," said Joe, as he went along the lane on that Sunday
when he first beheld this divine creature. "I'm danged if she beant
about the smartest lookin o' any on 'em. Miss Mary beant nothing to her:
it's a dandelion to a toolup."

So ever since that time Joe had slept less frequently in the hay-loft on
a Sunday afternoon; and, be it said to his credit, had attended his
church with greater punctuality. The vicar took great notice of the
lad's religious tendencies, and had him to his night-school at the
vicarage, in consequence; and certainly no vicar ever knew a boy more
regular in his attendance. He was there waiting to go in ever so long
before the school began, and was always the very last to leave the
premises.

Often he would peep over the quick-set hedge into the kitchen-window,
just to catch a glance of this lovely angel. And yet, so far as he could
tell, she had never looked at him. When she opened the door, Joe always
felt a thrill run through him as if some extraordinary thing had
happened. It was a kind of jump; and yet he had jumped many times before
that: "it wasn't the sort of jump," he said, "as a chap gits either from
bein' frit or bein' pleased." And what to make of it he didn't know.
Then Polly's cap was about the loveliest thing, next to Polly herself, he
had ever seen. It was more like a May blossom than anything else, or a
beautiful butterfly on the top of a water-lily. In fact, all the rural
images of a rude but not inartistic mind came and went as this country
boy thought of his beautiful Polly. As he ploughed the field, if he saw
a May-blossom in the hedgerow, it reminded him of Polly's cap; and even
the little gentle daisy was like Polly herself. Pretty Polly was
everywhere!

Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin, on a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their
pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long
churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close
companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly,
so as to make it last the longer, wit