Above, below, around, Porlock Bay was decked in her fairest garb. Earth, air, and water seemed holding jubilee; but the loveliest object in earth, air, or water was a maiden seated on a point of rock, washed by the drowsy lap and murmur of the tide, who seemed pondering deeply yet in simple happy thought--a maiden of comely features and gracious presence, the sweetest lass from Bossington Point to Bideford Bay, nimble with needle, tongue and finger, courteous, quick-witted, brave, tender-hearted, the light of a household, the darling of a hamlet, the toast of three counties,--and her name was Nelly Carew. She had sat the best part of an hour without moving from her place, therefore she could not be waiting for an expected arrival. She swung her straw hat backwards and forwards by its broad blue ribbon, with the regularity of a pendulum; therefore her meditations could have been of no agitating kind, and she looked straight into the horizon, neither upward like those who live in the future, nor downwards like those who ponder on the past. Nevertheless, her reflections must have been of an engrossing nature, for she started at a man's footstep on the shingle, and the healthy colour mantled in her cheek, while she rose and put out her hand to be grasped in that of a square-shouldered, rough-looking personage, whose greeting, though perfectly respectful, seemed more cordial than polite. "Good even, Mistress Nelly," said the new comer, in a deep sonorous voice; "and a penny for your thoughts, if I may be so bold; for thinking you were, my pretty lass, I'll wager a bodkin, of something very nigh your heart." She turned her blue eyes--and Nelly Carew's blue eyes made fools of the opposite sex at short notice--full in the speaker's face. "Indeed, Parson," she answered, "you never spoke a truer word in the pulpit, nor out of it. I've turned it over in my mind till I'm dazed with thinking, and I can't get her to sit, do what I will." "Sit!" exclaimed the other. "Where and how?" "Why, the speckled hen to be sure!" answered Nelly, rather impatiently. "If she addles all these as she addled the last hatch, I'll forswear keeping fowls, that I will--it puts me past my patience. How do you contrive with yours, Mr. Gale? though to be sure, if I was a parson, like you, I wouldn't keep game-cocks. I couldn't have the heart to see the poor things fight!"