"It was during a lengthened period like this," he remarked to himself, as he paced up and down the kitchen--"yes, it was during infinite time like this that the rugged rocks became waveworn pebbles!" Suddenly he heard the sound of horses’ feet. "It is a rider," he said. "I shall have to go out to him." He hastened to the door, and saw a young woman on a great white horse. She carried a market basket on her arm. She wore no riding-habit, but was dressed in the ordinary way. There was nothing picturesque about her appearance, but Hieronymus thought her face looked interesting. She glanced at him as though she wondered what he could possibly be doing at the Green Dragon. "Well, and what may I do for you?" he asked. He did not quite like to say, "What may I bring for you?" He left her to decide that matter. "I wanted to see Mrs. Benbow," she said. "She is busy doing the washing," he answered. "But I will go and tell her, if you will kindly detain any customer who may chance to pass by." He hurried away, and came back with the answer that Mrs. Benbow would be out in a minute. "Thank you," the young woman said quietly. Then she added: "You have hurt your arm, I see." "Yes," he answered; "it is a great nuisance. I cannot write. I have been wondering whether I could get any one to write for me. Do you know of any one?" "No," she said bitterly; "we don’t write here. We make butter and cheese, and we fatten up our poultry, and then we go to market and sell our butter, cheese, and poultry." "Well," said Hieronymus, "and why shouldn’t you?" He looked up at her, and saw what a discontented expression had come over her young face. She took no notice of his interruption, but just switched the horse’s ears with the end of her whip. "That is what we do year after year," she continued, "until I suppose we have become so dull that we don’t care to do anything else. That is what we have come into the world for: to make butter and cheese, and fatten up our poultry, and go to market." "Yes," he answered cheerily, "and we all have to do it in some form or other. We all go to market to sell our goods, whether they be brains, or practical common-sense (which often, you know, has nothing to do with brains), or butter, or poultry. Now I don’t know, of course, what you have in your basket; but supposing you have eggs, which you are taking to market. Well, you are precisely in the same condition as the poet who is on his way to a publisher’s, carrying a new poem in his vest pocket. And yet there is a difference." "Of course there is," she jerked out scornfully. "Yes, there _is_ a difference," he continued, placidly; "it is this: you will return without those eggs, but the poet will come back still carrying his poem in his breast-pocket!" Then he laughed at his own remark.