safely come up this day to sun themselves; and when the infant crabs should next propose to play hide-and-seek in what was to them a sort of marine jungle, they would find their moist retreat stripped and bare, and must betake themselves again to the tide. High on the beach might be seen parties busy at their work, or busier at their recreation,— spreading and tossing the ooze as if it were hay, or broaching the cider cask, and distributing the vraicking cakes. Mrs. Le Brocq once nearly upset the boat, by lifting up her ponderous self with the view of hailing the mowers on shore;—a feat about as practicable in her case as shaking hands with one on the top of Coutances cathedral. She was glad to reseat herself, and be no worse, and try to wait patiently till the boat should have rounded Archirondel tower, and given her up to tread one of the green paths from St. Catherine’s bay to the ridge, on the other side of which was Louise. From that ridge might be seen the farm-house, just as was expected. It did not seem to have lost an ivy-leaf, nor to have gained so much as a lichen on its pales. The pigeons looked the very same. The fowls strutted and perched exactly as formerly; and the brook trotted over the stones as if it had never grown tired all these many months. “Who could have thought we had been away?” was Anna’s first exclamation. Her mother was toiling on too fast to reply; but Aaron gave an unconscious answer to her thought when he presently overtook them, and delivered the result of the observation he had lingered on the ridge to make with his boat glass. “Who do you think is in the porch, mother?” “Louise!” “And who else?—No, not her husband, nor Victorine; but her baby. There is a bundle on her arm; I am sure it must be her baby. Charles is out vraicking, no doubt; and Victorine is milking, I see, behind there. Not so fast, mother, if I may advise. Let me go first. She will be less surprised to see me; and I think she cannot be strong yet, or she would have been out vraicking too.” It was, in fact, Louise’s first evening out of doors after her confinement. What an evening it was!—Anna relieving her of all household cares; her mother overflowing by turns with affecting narrative and admiration of the infant; Stephen giving a droll turn to every thing; and no paternal restraint to spoil the whole! It was a pity that night was near, and that it would come to put a stop to the interesting questions and answers that abounded. “When do you gather your apples, love? I have been thinking we must soon be setting about your cider.” “But, mother, only think of your coming away from London without seeing the king!” “My dear, your father did write to him: so it is not as if we had had nothing to do with him.” “And what was the answer like?”