"Do you superintend your property yourself?" said the doctor, who farmed his own glebe and who, unwilling to part with so charming a guest, seized him now by the button. "Superintend it myself! why, not exactly. There is a bailiff, whose views of things don't agree with mine, and who now and then gives me a good deal of trouble." "Then why don't you discharge him altogether?" "Ah! I wish I could; but 't is a necessary evil. We landed proprietors, my dear sir, must always be plagued with some thing of the sort. For my part, I have found those cursed bailiffs would take away, if they could, all the little property one has been trying to accumulate. But," abruptly changing his manner into one of great softness, "could I not proffer my services and my companionship to this young lady? Would she allow me to conduct her home, and indeed stamp this day upon my memory as one of the few delightful ones I have ever known?" "Thank you, dear sir," said Mrs. Slopperton, answering at once for Lucy; "it is very considerate of you.--And I am sure, my love, I could not think of letting you go home alone with old John, after such an adventure to the poor dear doctor." Lucy began an excuse which the good lady would not hear. But as the servant whom Mr. Brandon was to send with a lantern to attend his daughter home had not arrived, and as Mrs. Slopperton, despite her prepossessions in favour of her husband's deliverer, did not for a moment contemplate his accompanying, without any other attendance, her young friend across the fields at that unseasonable hour, the stranger was forced, for the present, to re-assume his seat. An open harpsichord at one end of the room gave him an opportunity to make some remark upon music; and this introducing an eulogium on Lucy's voice from Mrs. Slopperton, necessarily ended in a request to Miss Brandon to indulge the stranger with a song. Never had Lucy, who was not a shy girl,--she was too innocent to be bashful,--felt nervous hitherto in singing before a stranger; but now she hesitated and faltered, and went through a whole series of little natural affectations before she complied with the request. She chose a song composed somewhat after the old English school, which at that time was reviving into fashion. The song, though conveying a sort of conceit, was not, perhaps, altogether without tenderness; it was a favourite with Lucy, she scarcely knew why, and ran thus:-- LUCY'S SONG.