[Illustration: 75. 75. HOOK HILL FARM, FRESHWATER _From the Water-colour in the possession of Sir James Kitson, Bt., M.P._ Painted 1891.] An old farmhouse on the other side of the Yar Valley to Farringford, but one which Tennyson often made an object for a walk. It possessed a fine yard and old thatch-covered barn, which, however, has passed out of existence, but not before Mrs. Allingham had perpetuated it in water-colour. This group of buildings has been painted by the artist from every side, and at other seasons than that represented here, when pear, apple, and lilac trees, primroses, and daisies vie with one another in heralding the coming spring. [Illustration: 76. AT POUND GREEN, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT _From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Douglas Freshfield._ Painted about 1891.] To the cottage-born child of to-day the name of the "Pound" has little significance, but even in the writer's recollection it not only had a fascination but a feeling almost akin to terror, being deemed, in very truth, to be a prison for the dumb animals who generally, through no fault of their own, were impounded there. Both it and its tenants too were always suggestive of starvation. When (following, at some interval of time, the village stocks) it passed out of use, the countryside, in losing both, forgot a very cruel phase of life. A child of to-day has, with all its education, not acquired many amusements to replace that of teasing the tenants of the Pound on the Green, so he never tires of pulling anything with the faintest similitude to the cart which he will probably spend much of his later life in driving. Here the youngster has evidently been making stabling for his toy under a seat whose back is formed out of some carved relic of an old sailing-ship that was probably wrecked at the Needles, and whose remains the tide carried in to Freshwater Bay. [Illustration: 77. A COTTAGE AT FRESHWATER GATE _From the Water-colour in the possession of Sir Henry Irving._ Painted 1891.] Tramps are usually few and far between in the Isle of Wight, for the reason that the island does not rear many, and those from the mainland do not care to cross the Solent lest, should they be tempted to wrong-doing, there may be a difficulty in avoiding the arm of the law or the confines of the island. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, to find the only flaw in our title of _Happy England_ in such a locality. But here it is, on this spring day, when apple, and pear, and primrose blossoms make one Bless His name That He hath mantled the green earth with flowers. We have the rift, making the discordant note, of want, in the person of a woman, dragged down with the burden of four children, sending the eldest to beg a crust at a house which cannot contain a superfluity of the good things of this world.