"What is your nearest village?" I asked of a labourer I met on the road one bleak day in early spring, after a great frost: for I had walked far enough and was cold and tired, and it seemed to me that it would be well to find shelter for the night and a place to settle down in for a season. "Burbage," he answered, pointing the way to it. And when I came to it, and walked slowly and thoughtfully the entire length of its one long street or road, my sister said to me: "Yet another old ancient village!" and then, with a slight tremor in her voice, "And you are going to stay in it!" "Yes," I replied, in a tone of studied indifference: but as to whether it was ancient or not I could not say;--I had never heard its name before, and knew nothing about it: doubtless it was characteristic--"That weary word," she murmured. --But it was neither strikingly picturesque, nor quaint, nor did I wish it were either one or the other, nor anything else attractive or remarkable, since I sought only for a quiet spot where my brain might think the thoughts and my hand do the work that occupied me. A village remote, rustic, commonplace, that would make no impression on my preoccupied mind and leave no lasting image, nor anything but a faint and fading memory. Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom-- And conquered her scruples and gloom. And fortune favoured her, all things conspiring to keep me content to walk in that path which I had so readily, so lightly, promised to keep: for the work to be done was bread and cheese to me, and in a sense to her, and had to be done, and there was nothing to distract attention. It was quiet in my chosen cottage, in the low-ceilinged room where I usually sat: outside, the walls were covered with ivy which made it like a lonely lodge in a wood; and when I opened my small outward-opening latticed window there was no sound except the sighing of the wind in the old yew tree growing beside and against the wall, and at intervals the chirruping of a pair of sparrows that flew up from time to time from the road with long straws in their bills. They were building a nest beneath my window--possibly it was the first nest made that year in all this country.