This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six in number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms--all clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces. I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired the distance. "Branscomb--are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will think of Branscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement. What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and what did it matter what any stranger thought of it? "But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless words. "I was born there, and married there, and have always lived at Branscombe with my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in this cottage." And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That she had been to other villages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe--not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I had never been there--had never even heard of it! People that went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth. Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before me. A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have been taken for a woman of Spain--the most natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth. But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her shame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness. In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched cottages.