“Wandering about the meadows one morning last May absorbed in the pastoral beauty of the season and the scenery, I was overtaken by a heavy shower, just as I passed old Mrs. Matthew’s great farm-house and forced to run for shelter to her hospitable porch. A pleasant shelter in good truth I found there. The green pastures dotted with fine old trees stretching all around; the clear brook winding about them, turning and returning on its course, as if loath to depart ... the village spire rising amongst a cluster of cottages, all but the roofs and chimneys concealed by a grove of oaks; the woody background and the blue hills in the distance, all so flowery and bowery in the pleasant month of May. The porch, around which a honeysuckle in full bloom was wreathing its sweet flowers ... was alive and musical with bees. It is hard to say which enjoyed the sweet breath of the shower and the honeysuckle most, the bees or I; but the rain began to drive so fast that at the end of five minutes I was not sorry to be discovered by a little girl belonging to the family, and ushered into the spacious kitchen, with its ample dresser glittering with crockery ware, and then finally conducted by Mrs. Matthews herself into her own comfortable parlour. “On my begging that I might cause no interruption she resumed her labours at a little table [where she was] mending a fustian jacket belonging to one of her sons. On the other side of the little table sat her pretty grand-daughter Patty, a black-eyed young woman, with a bright complexion, a neat, trim figure, and a general air of gentility considerably above her station. She was trimming a very smart straw hat with pink ribands, trimming and untrimming, for the bows were tied and untied, taken off and put on, and taken off again, with a look of impatience and discontent, not common to a damsel of seventeen when contemplating a new piece of finery. The poor little lass was evidently out of sorts. She sighed and quirked and fidgeted and seemed ready to cry, whilst her grandmother just glanced at her face under her spectacles, pursed up her mouth, and contrived with some difficulty not to laugh. At last Patty spoke. “‘Now, grandmother, you will let me go to Chapel Row revel this afternoon, won’t you?’ “‘Humph,’ said Mrs. Matthews. “‘It hardly rains at all, grandmother!’ “‘Humph!’ again said Mrs. Matthews, opening the prodigious scissors with which she was amputating, so to say, a button, and directing the rounded end significantly to my wet shawl, whilst the sharp point was reverted towards the dripping honeysuckle. ‘Humph!’ “‘There’s no dirt to signify!’ “Another ‘Humph!’ and another point to the draggled tail of my white gown. “‘At all events it’s going to clear.’ “Two ‘Humphs!’ and two points, one to the clouds and one to the barometer. “‘It’s only seven miles,’ said Patty; ‘and if the horses are wanted, I can walk.’ “‘Humph!’ quoth Mrs. Matthews. “‘My Aunt Ellis will be there, and my cousin Mary.’