after time it is forgotten. Possessed unconsciously with this secret, Hope threw himself from his horse at the entrance of the meadow where the cowslip-gatherers were busy, fastened his steed to the gate, and joined the party. The children ran to him with the gleanings of intelligence which they had acquired since he saw them last, half an hour before:--that it was well they did not put off their gathering any longer, for some of the flowers were beginning to dry up already: that cousins had never tasted cowslip-tea;--(was not this _very_ odd?)--that cousin Hester would not help to pick the flowers for drying,--she thought it such a pity to pull the blossom out of the calyx: that Sophia would not help either, because it was warm: that cousin Margaret had gathered a great many, but she had been ever so long watching a spider's nest,--a nasty large spider's nest that Matilda was just going to break into, when cousin Margaret asked her not to spoil it? Margaret was indeed on her knees, prying into the spider's nest. When duly laughed at, she owned to having seen cobwebs before, but maintained that cobwebs in a closet were a very different affair from a spider's nest in a field. "I rather think, however," said she, "the word `nest' itself has something to do with my liking, for what I have been looking at. Some of your commonest country words have a charm to the ear and imagination of townspeople that you could not understand." "But," said Mr Hope, "I thought nests were very common in Birmingham. Have you not nests of boxes, and nests of work-tables?" "Yes, and so we have stacks of chimneys; but yet we do not think of hay-making when we see the smoke of the town.--I rather think country words are only captivating as relating to the country; but then you cannot think how bewitching they are to people who live in streets." "The children might have found you a prettier sort of nest to indulge your fancy with, I should think. There must be plenty of creatures besides spiders in this wide meadow."