s practice, when I happened
to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
hymns out of the same book.

Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
stopped too.

"He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"

As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked
to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.

[Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"]

"I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
"that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
inhabitants."

Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
"She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
got on very well."

"Indeed!" said I--I expect with flashing eye--"but the next time you go
into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as r