she brightened up and said she had heard her uncle read those lines. He found she was further familiar with the flowers summoned to lament the friend of John Milton who bade the ‘daffodillies’ fill their cups with tears; and she could herself repeat part of the catalogue of herbs in Shenstone’s Schoolmistress’s garden:— The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme, Fresh balm and mary-gold of cheerful hue, The lowly gill that never dares to climb. Oliver was as much amazed and elated as if he had encountered one of the ‘mute inglorious Miltons’ so often referred to. In the innocence of his heart he proceeded to cultivate the acquaintance of ‘a rational human being,’ as he called her, rendering the process conspicuous by sundry darts into the wood, and dives down to the brink of the Brook, as his eye was caught by a specimen of winter-green or horehound which he could procure for her. She was a plain elderly woman, quite old enough to be his mother. She and her sister had appeared neglected at the picnic, a circumstance which was in itself a patent reason for such small atonement as lay in the power of Oliver or any other promoter of the feast. But if he could only have realised it, the social reformer had placed himself under a tyranny as great as any he could encounter in this world. A glare of light like that on a throne was cast on all he did. A score of eyes, which did not seem to be seeing him, were, in fact, recording his every action and commenting on it, weighing him in the balance and finding him wanting. ‘I do believe Constable is low-lifed,’ said ’Mily Polley to Jack Dadd, borrowing Jack’s masculine use of the surname where his friend was concerned; ‘or is he stuck-up, after all, like Fan? Is this to show us he is condescending from the highest to the lowest, and it may as well be the lowest to prove the depth of his condescension? Good gracious! to think of his paying attention to an old frump like Turnips.’ ‘It is a queer taste,’ said Jack lazily, while he lolled on the bank by the lady’s side. ‘I can tell you,’ said ’Mily in confidence, ‘I don’t think it’s the best of usage to our ’Liza, whom he’s letting walk about with only Bella Willet, after he has given us some cause to think he was making up to ’Liza.’ ‘Serve ’Liza right for jumping at a newcomer because of his college education, as has only made a donkey of him to begin with, and because he has got hold of his father’s business and tin, which, as sure as I live, he’ll make ducks and drakes of before he dies,’ said Jack sardonically.