Continuing the path, a stone pack-horse track, leading past a hedge snow-white with may, and down into a little wood, from the depths of which one could hear a brook babbling. Then up across the sunny field beyond, and yet up over another field to where the brow of the hill is crowned by old farm-buildings standing against the sky. Down this stone path a young man going whistling home to tea. Then staying to bend a swarthy face to the white may to smell it, and then plucking a huge branch on which the blossom lies like a heavy fall of snow, and throwing that aside for a better, and tearing off another and yet another, with the prodigal recklessness of a pauper; and so, whistling, on into the wood with his arms full. Down the sunny field, as he goes up it, a woman coming to meet him--with _her_ arms full. Filled by a child with a may-white frock, and hair shining with the warm colors of the sandstone. A young woman, having a fair forehead visible a long way off, and buxom cheeks, and steadfast eyes. When they meet he kisses her, and she pulls his dark hair and smooths her own, and cuffs him in country fashion. Then they change burdens, and she takes the may into her apron (stooping to pick up fallen bits), and the child sits on the man's shoulder, and cuffs and lugs its father as the mother did, and is chidden by her and kissed by him. And all the babbling of their chiding and crowing and laughter comes across the babbling of the brook to the ears of the old gaffers gossiping on the wall. Gaffer I. spits out an over-munched stalk of meadow soft-grass, and speaks: "D'ye see yon chap?" Gaffer II. takes up his hat and wipes it round with a spotted handkerchief (for your Sunday hat is a heating thing for work-day wear), and puts it on, and makes reply: "Aye. But he beats me. And--see there!--he's t'first that's beat me yet. Why, lad! I've met young chaps to-day I could ha' sworn to for mates of mine forty years back--if I hadn't ha' been i't' churchyard spelling over their fathers' tumstuns!" "Aye. There's a many old standards gone home o' lately." "What do they call _him?_" "T' young chap?" "Aye." "They _call_ him--Darwin." "Dar--win? I should known a Darwin. They're old standards, is Darwins. What's he to Daddy Darwin of t' Dovecot yonder?" "He _owns_ t' Dovecot. Did ye see t' lass?" "Aye. Shoo's his missus, I reckon?" "Aye." "What did they call her?" "Phoebe Shaw they called her. And if she'd been _my_ lass--but that's nother here nor there, and he's got t' Dovecot." "Shaw? _They're_ old standards, is Shaws. Phoebe? They called her mother Phoebe. Phoebe Johnson. She were a dainty lass! My father were very fond of Phoebe Johnson. He said she allus put him i' mind of our orchard on drying days; pink and white apple-blossom and clean clothes. And yon's her daughter? Where d'ye say t'young chap come from? He don't look like hereabouts."