ning of
which must be obscure to the rising generation.

Within doors I found a great discussion going forward between Hilary
and a farmer who had called, as to the exact relationship of a man who
had just quitted his tenancy and another who died nearly forty years
before. They could not agree either as to the kinship or the date;
though the visitor was the more certain because he so well remembered
that there was an extraordinary cut of 'turvin' that year. The
'turvin' is the hay made on the leaze, not the meadows, out of the
rough grass and bennets left by the cows. To listen to the zest with
which they entered into the minutest details of the family affairs of
so long ago, concerning people with whom neither had any
connection--how they recollected the smallest particulars--was
astonishing. This marvellous capacity for gossip seemed like a
revelation of a totally different state of society. The memory of
country people for such details is beyond belief.

When the visitor left with his wife we walked to the gate and saw them
down the road; and it was curious to note that they did not walk side
by side. If you meet a farmer of the old style and his wife walking
together, never do you see them arm-in-arm. The husband walks a yard
or two in front, or else on the other side of the road; and this even
when they are going to church.

CHAPTER VIII.

CICELY'S DAIRY. HILARY'S TALK.

Just outside the palings of the courtyard at Lucketts' Place, in front
of the dairy, was a line of damson and plum trees standing in a narrow
patch bordered by a miniature box-hedge. The thrushes were always
searching about in this box, which was hardly high enough to hide
them, for the snails which they found there. They broke the shells on
the stone flags of the garden path adjacent, and were often so
intently occupied in the box as to seem to fly up from under the very
feet of any one who passed.

Under the damson tree the first white snowdrops came, and the
crocuses, whose yellow petals often appeared over the snow, and
presently the daffodils and the beautiful narcissus. There were
cowslips and primroses, too, which the boys last year had planted
upside down that they might come variegated. The earliest violet was
gathered there, for the corner was enclosed on three sides, and
somehow the sunshine fell more genially in that untrimmed spot than in
formal gardens where it is courted. Against the house a pear was
trained, and