When at last he came to pay a visit to the old fishing-village, he found Molly a tall, strong and sensible-looking maiden of eighteen. It was she who proposed a row to the Red Cliffs, to see the scene of their adventure four years ago; and it was she who rowed this time, while he sat in the stern and steered. But it was he who, on their homeward way, just before they rounded the last headland into the little harbour, let go the tiller, took her brown face between his hands, and said once more, “Dear old Molly!” And they plighted their loves as the old thatched cottages came in sight under the curving embrace of the down. A DEBATE IN AN ORCHARD. It was one of those midsummer evenings which to the discontented seem almost too long. In the orchard the old birds had finished finding the young ones their supper, and the long labours of the day were over. The swifts were flying, and screaming with delight as they flew, round the old church tower, and the swallows were gliding less noisily in and out of the long shadows of the apple-trees; but most of the dwellers in the orchard had taken a quiet perch, and were singing, or dallying in some pleasant way with the last half-hour of daylight, until it should be time to go to roost. A blackbird, a robin, a sparrow, and a blue titmouse found themselves together on a single tree. They were old acquaintances, for they had lived together in the orchard and garden the whole winter; friends, in the proper sense of the word, they were not, for they differed a good deal in their opinions, and had quarrelled nearly every day in the winter over the crumbs which had been put for them outside the farmhouse windows. But they contrived to put up with one another, and had been so busy with their young of late, that all ill-feeling had passed away from their minds. “Well,” said the sparrow, “here we are again. Upon my word I wish the sun would set; there’s nothing more to do.” “Why don’t you sing?” said the robin. “That’s a stale joke,” was the answer. “And your song is getting stale too, Mr. Robin; you’ll have to leave it off a bit soon.” “One should not sing too much,” observed the blackbird. “I wonder you robins don’t get tired of hearing yourselves. It’s too hot to sing this evening: spring is the time for that. Let us do something else to amuse ourselves.” “Let us see who can hang from a bough best with his head downwards,” said the blue tit; and he instantly performed the feat with great agility. The sparrow, being in want of something to do, tried to imitate him, but he couldn’t do it a bit, and made himself ridiculous.