Joe used to wonder at me at first, when I refused his offers of a day’s coursing, or a ride with him to Farringdon or Didcot markets; but he soon got used to it, and put it down to my cockney bringing up, and congratulated himself that, at any rate, I was pretty good company over a pipe in the kitchen. The autumn days sped away all too quickly, but I made the most of them as they passed, and over and over again I wondered whether there were any but kind and hospitable and amusing people in the Vale, for the longer I stayed there, the more I was astonished at the kind courtesy of everybody I came across, from the highest to the lowest, and I suppose everybody else would find it the same as I did. It seemed as if I were destined to leave Elm Close without a single unkind thought of any body I had seen while there, for even Jack made his peace with me. Only two days before my departure, Miss Lucy gave out at breakfast that she was going to walk over to see her uncle, and wanted to know if her mother or Joe had any message. No, they hadn’t. But of course I managed to accompany her. When we came to her uncle’s farm, he was out, and in five minutes Miss Lucy was away with her dear friend and cousin, one of the girls I had seen at the pastime, and I was left to the tender mercies of Jack. However, Jack at his own house, with no women by to encourage him to make a fool of himself, was a very decent fellow. He walked me about the homestead, and chatted away about the pastime, and the accomplishments of his terrier dog, whom he had got from the kennel of the Berkshire hounds, and whose father used to run with them regularly. Then he began to inquire about me in a patronizing way; how I came to know Joe, what I was, and where I lived. And when he had satisfied his curiosity about me, he took to talking about his cousins. Joe, I soon found out, was his hero; and he looked forward to the time when he should be able to breed a good horse, like Joe’s chestnut, and to go about to all the markets and carry his head as high as any one, as Joe could, as the height of human happiness. As to cousin Lu, if he were looking out for any thing of the sort, there was no girl within twenty miles that he knew of to whom she couldn’t give a stone over any country. But she wasn’t likely to marry any of the young men about; she was too full of fun, and laughed at them too much. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised now, if she was to take to some town chap like you, after all’s said and done,” said Jack, in conclusion, as we returned to the house.