your good service is
forgotten. If it turns out ill, you are abused by both parties.'

The doctor's soliloquy was cut short by a sound of lamentation, which,
as he went on, came to him in louder and louder bursts. He was attracted
to the spot whence the sounds proceeded, and had some difficulty in
discovering a doleful swain, who was ensconced in a mass of fern, taller
than himself if he had been upright; and but that, by rolling over and
over in the turbulence of his grief, he had flattened a large space down
to the edge of the forest brook near which he reclined, he would
have remained invisible in his lair. The tears in his eyes, and the
passionate utterances of his voice, contrasted strangely with a round
russetin face, which seemed fortified by beef and ale against all
possible furrows of care; but against love, even beef and ale, mighty
talismans as they are, are feeble barriers. Cupid's arrows had pierced
through the _os triplex_ of treble X, and the stricken deer lay mourning
by the stream.

[Illustration: A doleful swain. 071-41]

The doctor approaching kindly inquired, 'What is the matter?' but was
answered only by a redoubled burst of sorrow, and an emphatic rejection
of all sympathy.

'You can't do me any good.'

'You do not know that,' said the doctor. 'No man knows what good another
can do him till he communicates his trouble.'

For some time the doctor could obtain no other answer than the
repetition of 'You can't do me any good.' But at length the patience and
kind face of the inquirer had their effect on the sad shepherd, and he
brought out with a desperate effort and a more clamorous explosion of
grief--

'She won't have me!'

'Who won't have you?'

'Well, if you must know,' said the swain, 'you must. It's one of the
young ladies up at the Folly.'

'Young ladies?' said the doctor.

'Servants they call themselves,' said the other; 'but they are more like
ladies, and hold their heads high enough, when one of them won't have
me. Father's is one of the best farms for miles round, and it's all his
own. He's a true old yeoman, father is. And there's nobody but him and
me. And if I had a nice wife, that would be a good housekeeper for him,
and play and sing to him of an evening--for she can do anything, she
can--read, write, and keep accounts, and play and sing--I've heard
her--and make a plum-pudding--I've seen her--we should be as happy as
three crickets--four, perhaps, at the year's end: an