"Yes, foolish things. I don't mind your being so fond of your garden and natural history, but it doesn't look becoming for you to come back as you did yesterday, with a bunch of weeds in one hand, a bundle of mosses in the other, and your hat pinned all over with butterflies. The people think you half mad." "But I had no pill-boxes, my dear Mary, and Thompson, of the Entomological, asked me to get him some of the large sulphurs." "Then I wish Thompson, of the Entomological, would come down and catch his butterflies himself. Give me a bit more fat." "For my part I should never wish to change." "Well, I don't know," said the elderly lady, slowly, as she made a very hearty breakfast. "Little Magnus is very nice and the garden very pretty, but there seems to be a something wanting. Tilt the dish and give me a little more of that gravy, Arthur. Why don't you pass your cup?" "And yet we have an abundance of the good things of this life, Mary, that we could not enjoy in a town." "Ye-es," said the little lady, dubiously; "but still there seems to be a something wanting." "I think we shall have plenty of honey this year, my dear Mary." "So we did last year, Arthur." "The mushrooms are coming on very fast in the pit. By the way, what did you do with those Saint George's agarics I brought home yesterday?" "Threw them away." "My dear Mary!" "And the best thing too, Arthur. Now, once for all, mushrooms are mushrooms; but I'm not going to have you poison yourself nor me neither with all kinds of toadstools, to gratify your love of experiment." The curate sighed, and there came a pause, broken by Miss Mary Rosebury saying: "Yes, I suppose we ought to be perfectly contented, and I think I am; but sometimes it seems a pity that we should always go on like this without any change. Oh, here's Brown." VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWO. A DANGEROUS VISITOR. Miss Mary Rosebury left her chair at the breakfast-table and hurried out to the rose-covered porch as a heavy step was heard upon the gravel; and directly after a sturdy-looking man, with half-a-dozen leather bags slung from his shoulder, appeared at the door. "Fine morning, miss. Two letters--three letters--four letters. `Stan'ard,' `Gar'ner's Chronkle,' `Beekeep's Junnel;' that's all, miss;" and before the little lady had had time to speak, the heavy step was receding over the gravel. "Four letters for you, Arthur. Shall I open them?" "Please, my dear Mary," said the Reverend Arthur, without evincing the slightest interest in the arrival of the post, for he was carefully filling up the holes in some well-made dry toast with the freshest of fresh butter. Miss Mary Rosebury laid the letters upon the table while she fished a spectacle-case from her pocket, balanced her glasses upon her rather decided-looking nose, gave the two little bunches of curls on either side of her white forehead a shake, and opened the first letter, reading aloud: