All the world, in the village of Sturton-le-Steeple, had said so, before the time of old Dorothy Pyecroft; but Dorothy did not join all the world in saying so. Sturton is a homely little place, situate in the pleasant shire of Nottingham, and lying within a couple of miles of the Trent, and old Lincolnshire; and its church steeple forms a pretty object in the landscape which you view from the hills above Gainsboro'. Dorothy Pyecroft, from the time that she was a child but the height of a table, went to Gainsboro' market with butter, eggs, or poultry, as regularly as Tuesday returned in each week; for the hearty old dame used commonly to boast that she had never known what it was to have a day's illness in her life, although, at the season we are beginning to gossip about, she was full threescore and ten. It was a bonny sight to see the dame go tripping o'er the charming lea which spreads its flowery riches from Sturton-le-Steeple to the banks of noble Trent, by four of the clock on a gay summer's morning, with the clean milking-pail under her arm, that was bare to the elbow. You would have thought, at a distance, she had been some blithe maiden in her teens. And then the cheerful and clear tone in which she summoned her cows, calling to them as kindly as if they were her children—"Come, my pratty creatures!" a call that was the signal for a treat of pleasing pastoral music to the enthusiastic early angler on the Trent: the rich, varied "low" of the cows,—alto, tenor, and bass,—answered that call, in changeful echo across the stream; the angler's delighted ear caught a treble, heavenward, from the matin lark, to complete the "harmony;" and even the cackling of the geese, uttering their confused joy at the sound of the dame's voice, seemed to mingle no unpleasing "discord" with the natural chorus. By the time that her morning's milking was over, the spoilt maidens of the village were only beginning to open their kitchen window-shutters; and she usually passed the whole train of them, loitering and chattering about their sweethearts, on their way to the lea, as she returned home, with the rich load upon her head, and her arms fixed as properly a-kimbo as could be shown by the sprightliest lass that ever carried a milking-pail. Some little shame was commonly felt among the loiterers as they passed the exemplary old woman,—but it did not result in their reformation. Old Farmer Muxloe, who was always abroad at daybreak, and usually chatted a few moments with the dame just at the point where the footpath crossed the bridle-way over the lea, often commented, in no very measured terms, on the decline of discipline among milk-maids since the days when he was a lad. "Ah, dame!" he used to say, "there have been sore changes since you and I used to take a turn around the maypole; I'm sure the world gets lazier and lazier every day."