etween earth and sky. The tall
elms on the green were still, save, near the great stage, one or two,
upon which had climbed young urchins, whose laughing faces peered
forth, here and there, from the foliage trembling under their restless
movements.

Amidst the crowd, as it streamed saunteringly along, were two
spectators; strangers to the place, as was notably proved by the
attention they excited, and the broad jokes their dress and appearance
provoked from the rustic wits,--jokes which they took with amused
good-humour, and sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already made
them very popular personages. Indeed, there was that about them which
propitiated liking. They were young; and the freshness of enjoyment was
so visible in their faces, that it begot a sympathy, and wherever they
went, other faces brightened round them.

One of the two whom we have thus individualized was of that enviable
age, ranging from five-and-twenty to seven-and-twenty, in which, if a
man cannot contrive to make life very pleasant,--pitiable indeed must be
the state of his digestive organs. But you might see by this gentleman's
countenance that if there were many like him, it would be a worse world
for the doctors. His cheek, though not highly coloured, was yet ruddy
and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair, which escaped
in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped
head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of
vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on the whole, and
would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his
nose, which was what the French call "a nose in the air,"--not a nose
supercilious, not a nose provocative, as such noses mostly are, but a
nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in
general,--a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly
that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With
such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even
write poetry, and yet not go to the dogs.

Never would he stick in the mud so long as he followed that nose in the
air.

By the help of that nose this gentleman wore a black velveteen jacket
of foreign cut; a mustache and imperial (then much rarer in England
than they have been since the Siege of Sebastopol); and yet left you
perfectly convinced that he was an honest Englishman, who had not only
no designs o