“Poor dear old man, what a life I led him!—now playing at bo-peep on one side of the great monument and now on the other; now crawling away amongst the green graves; now gliding round before him, and laughing up in his face as he sat.... How he would catch me away from the very shadow of danger if a ball came near; and how often did he interrupt his own labours to forward my amusement, sliding from his perch to gather lime branches to stick in Coe’s collar, or to collect daisies, buttercups, or ragged-robins to make what I used to call daisy-beds for my doll.” Here is another pretty incident of the Alresford life recorded by Miss Mitford. “Before we left Hampshire,” she writes, “my maid Nancy married a young farmer, and nothing would serve her but I must be bridesmaid. And so it was settled. “I remember the whole scene as if it were yesterday! How my father took me himself to the churchyard gate, where the procession was formed, and how I walked next to the young couple hand-in-hand with the bridegroom’s man, no other than the village blacksmith, a giant of six feet three, who might have served as a model for Hercules. Much trouble had he to stoop low enough to reach down to my hand, and many were the rustic jokes passed upon the disproportioned pair.... “In this order, followed by the parents on both sides, and a due number of uncles, aunts and cousins, we entered the church, where I held the glove with all the gravity and importance proper to my office; and so contagious is emotion that when the bride cried, I could not help crying for company. But it was a love-match, and between smiles and blushes Nancy’s tears soon disappeared, and so did mine. The happy husband helped his pretty wife into her own chaise-cart, my friend the blacksmith lifted me in after her, and we drove gaily to the large, comfortable farm-house where her future life was to be spent. “The bride was [soon] taken to survey her new dominions by her proud bridegroom, and the blacksmith, finding me, I suppose, easier to carry than to lead, followed close upon their steps with me in his arms. “Nothing could exceed the good nature of my country beau; he pointed out bantams and pea-fowls, and took me to see a tame lamb and a tall, staggering calf, born that morning; but for all that I do not think I should have submitted to the indignity of being carried if it had not been for the chastening influence of a little touch of fear. Entering the poultry yard I had caught sight of a certain turkey-cock, who erected that circular tail of his, and swelled out his deep red comb and gills after a fashion familiar to that truculent bird, but which up to the present hour I am far from admiring....