At the top of the hill, these lofty themes were being handled worthily; while, at the bottom, little cares had equal glance of the democrat sun, but no stars allotted to regard them. In plain English,--Bonny and Jack were as busy as their betters. They had taken their usual round that morning, seeking the staff of life--if that staff be applicable to a donkey--in village, hamlet, and farm-house, or among the lanes and hedges. The sympathy and goodwill between them daily grew more intimate, and their tastes more similar; so that it scarcely seemed impossible that Bonny in the end might learn to eat clover, and Jack to rejoice in money. Open air, and roving life, the ups and downs of want and weal, the freedom of having nothing to lose, and the joyful luck of finding things--these, and perhaps a little spice of unknown sweetness in living at large on their fellow-creatures’ labours, combined to make them as happy a pair, as the day was long, or the weather good. In the winter--ah! why should we think of such trouble? Perhaps there will never be winter again. At any rate, Bonny was sitting in front of the door of his castle (or rather in front of the doorway, because he was happy enough not to have a door), as proud and contented as if there could never be any more winter of discontent. He had picked up a hat in a ditch that day, lost by some man going home from his inn; and knowing from his patron, the pigman Bottler, that the surest token of a blameless life is to be found in the hat of a man, the boy, stirred by the first heave of ambition, had put on this hat, and was practising hat-craft (having gone with his head as it was born hitherto), to the utter surprise, and with the puzzled protest, of his beloved donkey. It was a most steady church-going hat of the chimney-pot order (then newly imported into benighted regions, but now of the essence of a godly life all over this free country), neither was it such a shocking bad hat as a man would cast away, if his wife were near. For Bonny’s young head it was a world too wide, but he had padded it with a blackbird’s nest; and though it seemed scarcely in harmony with his rakish waistcoat, and bare red shanks (spread on the grass for exhibition, and starred with myriad furze and bramble), still he was conscious of a distinguished air, and nodded to the donkey to look at him. While these were gazing at one another, with free interchange of opinion, the rector of the parish, on his little pony, turned the corner bluntly. He was on his way home, at the bottom of the coombe, not in the very best temper perhaps, in spite of the sport in prospect; because Sir Roland had met so unkindly his kind desire to know things. “What have you got on your lap, boy?” Mr. Hales so strongly shouted, that sulky Echo pricked her ears; and “on your lap, boy,” went all up the lonely coombe melodiously.