As she spoke, the girl threw open the door of a cavernous oven, and with an air of housewifely pride displayed a goodly array of brown loaves round as cannon-balls, earthen crocks suggestive of baked beans and Indian pudding, and near the door a pan of spicy cakes delectable to smell and see. These she drew forth and set upon the table, turning from the oven after a careful inspection of its contents with the complexion of a damask rose. "Delicious spectacle!" exclaimed the artist, with his eyes upon the pretty cook, while hers were on her handiwork. "You shall taste them, for they are made from a very old receipt and are called sweethearts," said the innocent creature, setting them forth on a large platter, while a smile went dimpling round her lips. "Capital name! they'll sell faster than you can make them. But it seems to me you are to have all the work, and Miss Dolly all the credit," added this highly appreciative guest, subduing with difficulty the rash impulse to embrace Miss Dolly's rosy handmaid on the spot. She seemed to feel the impending danger, and saying hastily, "You must have some cider to go with your cake: that's the correct thing, you know," she tripped away with hospitable zeal. "Upon my soul, I begin to feel like the Prince of the fairy tale in this quiet place where every thing seems to have been asleep for a hundred years. The little beauty ought to have been asleep too, and given me a chance to wake her. More of a Cinderella than a princess, I fancy, and leads a hard life of it between Miss Dolly and the second Mrs. Hill. Wonder what happy fellow will break the spell and set her free?" and the young man paced the kitchen, humming softly,-- "And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold; And far across the hills they went, In that new world which is the old," till the sound of a light step made him dart into a chair, saying to himself with a sudden descent from poetry to prose, "Bless her little heart, I'll drink her cider if it's as sour as vinegar." In came the maid, bearing a tankard on a salver; and, adding several sweethearts, she offered the homely lunch with a curtsey and a smile that would have glorified even pork and beans. "You are sitting in the General's chair, and here is the tankard he used; you can drink his health, if you like." "I'd rather drink that of the maker of sweethearts;" and, rising, the artist did so, gallantly regardless of consequences. But the cider was excellent, and subsiding into the immortal chair he enjoyed his lunch with the hearty appetite of a boy, while the damsel began to fold up the garments airing on the settle, and lay them into a chest standing near; the one quite unconscious that he was drinking draughts of a far more potent liquor than apple-juice, the other that she had begun to spin a golden thread instead of yarn when she turned the great wheel that day.