led with welling
emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
spoke.

I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
over the fields, for there is a right of way--meaning a little
path--through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
character in a novel.

I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
planted.

_Letter Number Five_

[Illustration]

CHEDCOMBE

This morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and wit