Mountford's was celebrated for succulent veal cutlets with fried bacon and tomato sauce, also for Severn salmon and lamperns; visitors to the cathedral and china works generally refreshed themselves there, and it was amusing to watch their exhausted and grim looks when entering and waiting, in comparison with their beaming smiles when confessing their indulgences on leaving; for no bills were rendered, and guests were trusted to remember the details consumed. You will always find the best eating-houses near the cathedrals; vergers' recitals are apt to be long-winded, and visitors require speedy refreshment after a complete round. It was a popular village belief that bad luck follows if a woman was the first to enter a house on Christmas morning, and Bell always made a point of being the first over my threshold, shouting loudly his greetings up the staircase. Bell's wife survived him, living on in the same cottage in which he was born and had passed his life. She was a hard-working woman, and came over to my house once a week for some years to bake the bread, made from my own wheat ground at the village mill. It was somewhat dark in colour, owing to the most nutritious parts of the grain being retained in the flour, but it was deliciously sweet and kept fresh for the whole week. I only wish everyone could enjoy the same sort; the modern bread is poor stuff by comparison, and its lack of nutritive value is undoubtedly the cause of much of the poor physique of our rural and urban population at the present time. I had a very human dog, Viper, partly fox-terrier; though not very "well bred," his manners were unexceptionable and his cleverness extraordinary. One summer afternoon Mrs. Bell was greatly surprised by Viper coming to her house much distressed and trying to tell her the reason; he was not to be put off or comforted, and, seizing her skirts, he dragged her to the door and outside. She guessed at once that her two boys were in some danger, and she followed the dog. He kept turning round to make sure that she was close behind, and led her down a lane, for perhaps 300 yards, to a gate leading into a 12-acre pasture. They pursued the footpath across the field, through another gate and over the bridge which spanned the brook, into a meadow beyond. There she found the children in fear of their lives from the antics of two mischievous colts which were capering round them with many snorts and much upturning of heels. It was really only play, but the boys were alarmed, and Viper, who had accompanied them, had evidently concluded that they were in danger. Before the days of the safety bicycle an excellent tricycle, called the "omnicycle," was put on the market; and the villagers were greatly excited over one I purchased, of course only for road work, expecting me to use it on my farming rounds; and Mrs. Bell was heard to say, "I knows I shall laugh when I sees the master a-coming round the farm on that thing."