The art critic of _The Times_, in speaking of the Exhibition where this drawing was exhibited, singled it out as "taking rank amongst the very best of Mrs. Allingham's work, and the very model of what an English water-colour should be, with its woodside cottage, its tangled hedges, its background of sombre fir trees, and figures of the girl with basket, and of the cottagers to whom she is offering her wares, showing as it does intense love for our beautiful south country landscape, with the power of seizing its most picturesque aspects with truth of eye and delicacy of hand." To my mind the most remarkable feature of the drawing is the way in which the long stretch of hedge has been managed. In most hands it would either be a monotonous and uninteresting feature or an absolute failure, for the difficulty of lending variety of surface and texture to so large a mass is only known to those who have attempted it; it could only be effected by painting it entirely from nature and on the spot, as was the case here. Many would have been tempted to break it up by varieties of garden blooms, but Mrs. Allingham has only relieved it by a stray spray or two of wild honeysuckle, which never flowers in masses, and a few white convolvuli. That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. This and the apples ripening on the straggling apple tree show the season to be early autumn, whereas the elder bush in the companion drawing puts its season as June. [Illustration: 49. COTTAGE AT SHOTTERMILL, NEAR HASLEMERE _From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. W. D. Houghton._ Painted 1891.] Each of three counties may practically claim this cottage for one of its types, for it lies absolutely at the junction of Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire. For a single tenement it is particularly roomy, and a comfortable one to boot, for its screen of tiles is carried so low down. It was a curious mood of the artist's to sit down square in front of it and paint its paling paralleling across the picture, a somewhat daring stroke of composition to carry on the line of white tiling with one of white clothes. The sky displays an unusual departure from the artist's custom, as the whole length of it is banked up with banks of cumuli.