“Veronica takes great interest in him. She has evidently a motherly side to her character, for which we none of us have given her credit. She says she is sure there is good in him. She sits beside him while he chops wood, and tells him carefully selected stories, calculated, she argues, to develop his intelligence. She is careful, moreover, not to hurt his feelings by any display of superiority. ‘Of course, anyone leading a useful life, such as yours,’ I overheard her saying to him this morning, ‘don’t naturally get much time for reading. I’ve nothing else to do, you see, ’cept to improve myself.’ “The donkey arrived this afternoon while I was out—galloping, I am given to understand, with ’Opkins on his back. There seems to be some secret between those two. We have tried him with hay, and we have tried him with thistles; but he seems to prefer bread-and-butter. I have not been able as yet to find out whether he takes tea or coffee in the morning. But he is an animal that evidently knows his own mind, and fortunately both are in the house. We are putting him up for to-night with the cow, who greeted him at first with enthusiasm and wanted to adopt him, but has grown cold to him since on discovering that he is not a calf. I have been trying to make friends with her, but she is so very unresponsive. She doesn’t seem to want anything but grass, and prefers to get that for herself. She doesn’t seem to want to be happy ever again. “A funny thing happened in church. I was forgetting to tell you. The St. Leonards occupy two pews at the opposite end from the door. They were all there when we arrived, with the exception of the old gentleman himself. He came in just before the ‘Dearly Beloved,’ when everybody was standing up. A running fire of suppressed titters followed him up the aisle, and some of the people laughed outright. I could see no reason why. He looked a dignified old gentleman in his grey hair and tightly buttoned frock coat, which gives him a somewhat military appearance. But when he came level with our pew I understood. Hurrying back from his morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of a disreputable sinner. “‘What’s the joke?’ he whispered to me as he passed—I was in the corner seat. ‘Have I missed it?’ “We called round on them after lunch, and at once I was appealed to for my decision. “‘Now, here’s a plain sensible girl,’ exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.’ (You will notice I put no comma after ‘plain.’ I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can’t you?) ‘And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church in trousers or in breeches?’