"Oh yes, sir, to be sure I can," and feeling that we were like to find a true friend in her, no sooner had I explained the occasion for it than she proved a friend indeed. Having procured these requisites with a bustling promptitude, she carried them to Cynthia and found her seated on the bridge as I had left her, bathing her toes in the cool sweetness of the stream. With many a "poor lamb!" and many a "deary, deary me!" she played the good Samaritan to my unlucky little one. She dried them, comforted them, and bound them up with all the honest grace of her great good nature. Never did I see a woman so brisk and motherly, and certainly never one so overflowing with true charity. When she had fulfilled her tender offices, and having kissed poor Cynthia on both cheeks in a most resounding manner, "because she was such a little beauty," she had us both go back with her to the cottage, that we might eat a bowl of curds and whey in the arbour cut in the laurel bushes, next the well, at the bottom of the garden. Looking back on the scenes of our itinerary, this bustling, kindly housewife makes the fairest picture of them all. Can the great who dwell in palaces conceive the degree of simple happiness it is in the power of such a creature to bestow? Whenever subsequently, in an hour of gloom, I may have been led to doubt the essential goodness that lies buried in the hearts of our human kind, I insensibly recall the conduct of this honest woman on that wet spring morning when we came to her door afflicted of mind and body. By gentle walking we were able to make many more miles that day. But a shadow had come over us. We had no longer the joyous intrepidity with which we had set out less than a week ago. A foreboding had come upon us. We could not hope to go much farther by our present mode. My little companion, strive as she might to conceal the dire fact, was rapidly being overcome. Her boots were wearing thin, she was already suffering much pain, and there was the sum of sevenpence left to us by which she could obtain her ease. We had not the heart to endeavour to increase it by blowing further on the flute. Besides, if the truth of that matter must be told, the stocks had given us a particular distaste for the gentle instrument. As the slow, cloud-laden hours passed to the occasional accompaniment of rain, with no glint of sunshine to relieve their drab monotony, it called for all the courage of which we had made a boast that morning to keep us from repining. The nearer we approached the evening the greater was our gloom. There was the eternal problem of food and shelter to be solved. The previous night our audacity had solved it for us. But in our present state we both felt quite incapable of furnishing the necessary spirit and effrontery for a repetition of that bold trick. Alas! our one desire was to be wafted by some magic into warmth and plenty that we might sup and fall asleep.