“A groom, who had been bred up in my grandfather’s family, always attended us, and I do think that both Brown Bess and George liked to have me with them almost as well as my father did. The old servant, proud, as grooms always are, of a fleet and beautiful horse, was almost as proud of my horsemanship, for I, cowardly enough, Heaven knows, in after years, was then too young and too ignorant for fear—if it could have been possible to have any sense of danger when strapped so tightly to my father’s saddle, and enclosed so fondly by his strong and loving arm. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning!” CHAPTER III VILLAGE NEIGHBOURS In one of Miss Mitford’s tales entitled _A Country Barber_ she describes a humble neighbour whose tiny shop adjoined their own “handsome and commodious dwelling.” This tiny shop has long since disappeared, having given place to the “adjoining house” already mentioned. “The barber’s shop,” we are told, “consisted of a low-browed cottage with a pole before it, and a half-hatch always open, through which was visible a little dusty hole where a few wigs, on battered wooden blocks, were ranged round a comfortable shaving chair. There was a legend, over the door in which ‘William Skinner, wig-maker, hairdresser, and barber’ was set forth in yellow letters on a blue ground.” After speaking of her happy early recollections of “Will Skinner,” Miss Mitford remarks: “So agreeable indeed is the impression which he has left in my memory that I cannot help regretting the decline and extinction of a race which, besides figuring so notably in the old novels and comedies, formed so genial a link between the higher orders of society, supplying to the rich the most familiar of followers and most harmless of gossips.” How vividly these words recall to our mind Sir Walter Scott’s old Caxon the barber and familiar follower of Mr. Oldbuck, “who was accustomed to bring to his patron each morning along with the powder and pomatum his version of the politics or the gossip of the neighbourhood. “‘Heeh, sirs!’ he exclaims, ‘nae wonder the commons will be discontent, when they see magistrates, and bailies, and deacons, and the provost himsell wi’ heads as bald and as bare as one o’ my blocks!’