"Why, Julie, you don't come out enough; you are done up directly. There, come along out into the fields, there's more fresh air there. I say, did I tell you that we are to go to town next week?" "No," said Julia, who shivered at every sound in the copse, and glanced from side to side, as if she expected to be seized at any moment. "But we are, and I don't know but what I long to be up in London to get away from Harry Artingale." "To get away?" said Julia, making an effort to be composed, and wondering why she had not told her sister what she had seen. "Yes, I want to get away; for of course," she added, archly, "he will have to stay down here." She spoke loudly, and all that had been said and left unsaid appealed very strongly to the senses of the great fellow in the copse. Julia need not have felt afraid that he was about to rise up and seize her; he remained perfectly still for a few moments, and then rolled over upon his back, laughing heartily, but in a perfectly silent manner, before having a struggle with himself to drag a short pipe and a tobacco-pouch out of his pocket. Filling his pipe quietly, he struck a match and lit it, placed his hands beneath his head, and stared straight up through the tender green leaves at the bare sky, while a robin came and perched upon a branch close by, and kept watching the ruffian with his great round eyes. "This is jolly," he said, in a bass growl; "better than having places of your own, and being obliged to work." Then he smoked for a few minutes before musing once more aloud. "Women arn't much account," he said, oracularly; "and the younger and prettier they are, the worse they are." There was another interval of smoking. "What a deal a fellow sees by just doing nothing but hang around. Franky Mallow, eh? Ah, he cuts me now. If I was John Berry, farmer, I'd cut him, that's what I'd do." Another interval of smoking. "Why don't young Serrol," (so he pronounced it) "go after the schoolmissus now, I wonder? Tired, I spose." Another smoking interval. "Hah, if it's because he prefers going down to the ford--" He stopped short. "I tell you what it is; if I thought--" Another pause, during which Jock Morrison made his short pipe still shorter by biting off a piece of the stem and spitting it out. "Shall I tell Tom--shan't I tell Tom? Tom don't like me, and tells me to keep myself to myself. He'd about smash him, that's what Tom would do, if he knowed, and then he'd be miserable for ever and ever, amen, as owd Sammy Warmoth used to say." Another smoking fit. "She's a good little lass, and the trouble she was in about her bairn was terrible." More smoking, and the robin looking wondering on. "Polly don't like me, but she's a kind-hearted little lass, and has give me many a hunk of bread and meat unknown to Tom, and I never see but that she was as square as square." Another long smoke.