found Edward, it
appeared, pacing the orchard, with the sort of set smile that
mountebanks wear in their precarious antics, fixed painfully on his
face, as with pins. Harold had opened well, on the rabbit subject, but,
with a fatal confusion between the abstract and the concrete, had then
gone on to remark that Edward's lop-eared doe, with her long hindlegs
and contemptuous twitch of the nose, always reminded him of Sabina
Larkin (a nine-year-old damsel, child of a neighbouring farmer): at
which point Edward, it would seem, had turned upon and savagely
maltreated him, twisting his arm and punching him in the short ribs. So
that Harold returned to the rabbit-hutches preceded by long-drawn wails:
anon wishing, with tears and sobs, that he were a man, to kick his
love-lorn brother; anon lamenting that ever he had been born.

I was not big enough to stand up to Edward personally, so I had to
console the sufferer by allowing him to grease the wheels of the
donkey-cart--a luscious treat that had been specially reserved for me, a
week past, by the gardener's boy, for putting in a good word on his
behalf with the new kitchen-maid. Harold was soon all smiles and grease;
and I was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with the significant hint that
had been gained as to the _fons et origo mali_.

Fortunately, means were at hand for resolving any doubts on the subject,
since the morning was Sunday, and already the bells were ringing for
church. Lest the connexion may not be evident at first sight, I should
explain that the gloomy period of church-time, with its enforced
inaction and its lack of real interest--passed, too, within sight of all
that the village held of fairest--was just the one when a young man's
fancies lightly turned to thoughts of love. The rest of the week
afforded no leisure for such trifling; but in church--well, there was
really nothing else to do! True, noughts-and-crosses might be indulged
in on flyleaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its slow length
along; but what balm or what solace could be found for the Sermon?
Naturally the eye, wandering here and there among the serried ranks,
made bold untrammelled choice among our fair fellow-supplicants. It was
in this way that, some months earlier, under the exceptional strain of
the Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wife
as a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquered
a heart which none of her be-musline