After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female person in black silk--and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter--and she told me ever so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing hymns out of the same book. Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they stopped too. "He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!" As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went. [Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"] "I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field, "that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the inhabitants." Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said. "She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they got on very well."