e wild ranunculus, and the
straw-coloured willow-leaves drooping into the water, she took out of
her pocket that little brown French classic, _Pharamond_, and started
again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest
of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that
Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the
voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the
last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers
borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of
these absurd Frenchmen's tongues.

At last Clarissa bethought her of the hour, sprang up, carefully put
away her volume--volumes and verses were precious then--and began to
pick her steps homewards. Ah! there had been a wretch of a man looking
at her--actually drawing her in his portfolio--the ugly fellow in the
waggon. Thank goodness, he could not have recognized her as his
fellow-traveller; he had copied the old farm-gate from the other side,
and he could only have got a glimpse of her figure through the bars with
not so much as the crown of her hat above them. He had only put her in
faithfully by a line or two, and three dots, and he did not observe her
now as she passed behind him and scanned his performance ere she
scampered off. But what a risk she had run of having her likeness taken
without her knowledge or consent, and carried about the country by a
walking gentleman!

It was quite an adventure; yet how could Clary think it so when an
earthquake and a whole town burnt to ashes were nothing in her French
novels! But, still true to the instinct of personality which causes us
to think a molehill in reference to our dear selves a world more
momentous and interesting than a mountain in reference to a princess of
the blood-royal, stately Clarissa flew off like a lapwing to tell Dulcie
that she had just had such an escape, and hit on such a discovery--she
had found out all about the two fellows; they were a couple of painters.
Marry! it was a marvel to see the one so hearty, and the other so rosy.
Doubtless they did not have an odd penny in their purse between them.

Clarissa came too late; she encountered Dulcie running out to meet her,
all alive with the same news, only gathered in a more orthodox manner.
The fair, soft lad, whom they had reckoned a nincompoop, had shaken
himself up in his companion's absence, and had offered his landlady a