“... Here comes a procession of cows going to milking, with an old attendant, still called the cow-boy, who, although they have seen me often enough, one should think, sitting beneath a tree writing ... with my dog Fanchon nestled at my feet—still _will_ start as if they had never seen a woman before in their lives. Back they start, and then they rush forward, and then the old drover emits certain sounds so horribly discordant that little Fanchon starts up in a fright on her feet, deranging all the economy of my extemporary desk and wellnigh upsetting the inkstand. Very much frightened is my pretty pet, the arrantest coward that ever walked upon four legs! And so she avenges herself, as cowards are wont to do, by following the cows at a safe distance as soon as they are fairly passed, and beginning to bark amain when they are nearly out of sight.” [Illustration: THE WHEELWRIGHT’S SHOP] Mary delighted in the beauty of the country that surrounds Three Mile Cross even from the first moment of her arrival, but her delight increased as she became more intimately acquainted with its charms. “This country is eminently flowery,” she writes. “Besides the variously tinted primroses and violets in singular profusion we have all sorts of orchises and arums; the delicate wood anemones; the still more delicate wood sorrel, with its lovely purple veins meandering over the white drooping flower; the field tulips [or fritillary] with its rich checker-work of lilac and crimson, and the sun shining through the leaves as through old painted glass; the ghostly field star of Bethlehem [and] the wild lilies-of-the-valley.... Yes, this is really a country of flowers!” She revelled, too, in the wilder beauty of the great commons in the neighbourhood “always picturesque and romantic,” she writes one day in early summer, “and now peculiarly brilliant, and glowing with the luxuriant orange flowers of the furze ... stretching around us like a sea of gold, and loading the very air with its rich almond odour.” She loved the winding rivers that water her part of the country; the “pleasant and pastoral Kennet for silver eels renowned,” upon whose bordering meadows the fritillary, both purple and white, grow in profusion; and the changeful, beautiful Loddon “rising sometimes level with its banks, so clear and smooth and peaceful ... and sometimes like a frisky, tricksy watersprite much addicted to wandering out of bounds.” There is a fine old stone bridge that crosses the Loddon about a mile beyond Shinfield, with a small inn, “The George,” close by, a favourite resort of fishermen. Standing on that bridge one summer evening Miss Mitford watched the setting sun descend over the water.