“I’s Borrowdale Jwohnny, just cumt up to Lunnon, Nay, gurn nit at _me_, for fear _I_ laugh at _you_; I’ve seen kneaves donn’d i’ silks, and gud men gang in tatters; The truth we sud tell, and gi’e auld Nick his due.” Then the gust rushed down the valley, and the voices of the happy holiday throng were swept, for a moment, away; as it lulled again, the ear, familiar to the song, could catch the laugh and cheers that accompanied the next verse:— “‘Keep frae’t lasses, and ne’er look ahint thee.’ ‘We’re deep as the best o’ them, fadder,’ says I. They packed up ae sark, Sunday weascwoat, twee neckcloths, Wot bannock, cauld dumplin’, and top stannin’ pye;” Again the voices were lost in the turning of the road, and presently, as they shot out once more, they might be heard singing in full chorus— “Ca’ and see cousin Jacep, he’s got a’ the money; He’ll get thee some guver’ment pleace to be seer.” At last, all was still—but scarcely more still than when the whole of the cottages were filled with their little families, for the village, though now utterly deserted, would have seemed to the stranger to have been as thickly populated and busy as ever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III. “Heaste, Jenny! put the bairns to bed, And mind they say their prayers. Sweet innocents! their heads yence down, They sleep away their cares! But gi’ them first a butter-shag; When young, they munnet want,— Nor ever sal a bairn o’ mine While I’ve a bit to grant.” _The Happy Family._ THE younger Sandboys took the departure of the villagers more to heart than did their mother; though, true to her woman’s nature, had the trip been anywhere but to London, she would have felt hurt at not making one of the pleasure party. On reaching home, she and Mr. Sandboys congratulated one another that they were not on their way to suffer the miseries of a week’s residence amidst either the dirt or the wickedness of the metropolis; but Elcy and Jobby began, for the first time, to feel that the retirement, which they heard so much vaunted every day, and which so many persons came from all parts of the country to look at and admire, cut them off from a considerable share of the pleasures which all the world else seemed so ready to enjoy, and which they began shrewdly to suspect were not quite so terrible as their father was in the habit of making out. Thus matters continued at Hassness till the next Tuesday evening, when Mrs. Sandboys remarked that it was “_very_ strange” that “Matthew Harker, t’ grocer, had not been to village” with his pony and cart that day; and what she _s’ud_ do for t’ tea, and sugar, and soft bread, she didn’t know.