Such sights were as pleasant to the Parson as the most beautiful landscapes of Italy can be to the dilettante. He paused a moment at the wicket to look around him, and distended his nostrils voluptuously to inhale the smell of the sweet peas, mixed with that of the new-mown hay in the fields behind, which a slight breeze bore to him. He then moved on, carefully scraped his shoes, clean and well polished as they were—for Mr. Dale was rather a beau in his own clerical way—on the scraper without the door, and lifted the latch. Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the grape from her classic urn. And the Parson felt as harmless, if not as elegant a pleasure, in contemplating Widow Fairfield brimming high a glittering can, which she designed for the refreshment of the thirsty hay-makers. Mrs. Fairfield was a middle-aged, tidy woman, with that alert precision of movement which seems to come from an active orderly mind; and as she now turned her head briskly at the sound of the Parson’s footsteps, she showed a countenance prepossessing, though not handsome—a countenance from which a pleasant hearty smile, breaking forth at that moment effaced some lines that, in repose, spoke “of sorrows, but of sorrows past;” and her cheek, paler than is common to the complexions even of the fair sex, when born and bred amidst a rural population, might have favored the guess that the earlier part of her life had been spent in the languid air and “within-doors” occupation of a town. “Never mind me,” said the Parson, as Mrs. Fairfield dropped her quick courtesy, and smoothed her apron; “if you are going into the hayfield, I will go with you; I have something to say to Lenny—an excellent boy.” WIDOW.—“Well, sir, and you are kind to say to it—but he is.” PARSON.—“He reads uncommonly well, he writes tolerably; he is the best lad in the whole school at his catechism and in the Bible lessons; and I assure you, when I see his face at church, looking up so attentively, I fancy that I shall read my sermon all the better for such a listener!” WIDOW, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.—“’Deed, sir, when my poor Mark died, I never thought I could have lived on as I have done. But that boy is so kind and good, that when I look at him sitting there in dear Mark’s chair, and remember how Mark loved him, and all he used to say to me about him, I feel somehow or other as if my goodman smiled on me, and would rather I was not with him yet, till the lad had grown up, and did not want me any more.” PARSON, looking away, and after a pause.—“You never hear any thing of the old folks at Lansmere?” “’Deed, sir, sin’ poor Mark died, they han’t noticed me, nor the boy; but,” added the widow, with all a peasant’s pride, “it isn’t that I wants their money; only it’s hard to feel strange like to one’s own father and mother!”