The Duchess of Rosemary Lane

. It is early morning, and they are in the heart of the country, with its fields, and hedges, and scent of sweet flowers and f

. The wagon is in the middle of the road--as though it were made solely for them to creep over, and nothing else had any business there--and when at length it moves aside, it does

and make room for their excellencies! Out of the way, you lumbering, white-smocked carter, and open your sleepy eyes! Out of the way, you pair of young dreamers, you, who, arm-in-arm so closely, are surely asleep and dreaming also! She, the first awake, starts in sudden alarm, with bright blushes now in her pretty, pensive face, and he--glad of the chance--throws his arm around her, and hurries her to the roadside, but a yard or two away from the bounding ca

hs and narrow lanes, over stiles, and under great spreading branches, whose arms bend down caressingly to shield them from the sun! What a morning to bring a long cou

ee the ripe corn waving. The mother sings a song about the days when we went gipsying a long time ag

e that Jane was telling me of?" (Jane is hi

thing that ever can happen. When a child is born with a mole on the r

ver. "If our young un's born with a mole on the rig

" says the mother, "and that

sweet honeysuckle, a piece of which he gives to the mother and the child--and the heavens are beautifully bright, and fa

his Jane, whose visitors have caught her in the act of making a pudding. The first embraces over, they go into the kitchen, where the pudding is tied up, and put into the pot, and is cooked by

Not a variation of colour in the sky, not a bird's note, not a whisper of the leaves, that the fond mother does not convert into a symbol of happiness for her heart's treasure. And as he sleeps, she si

anges now into a white road, over which the cart is slowly passing; now into a field of waving corn, through which they are calmly wending their way without breaking a stalk; now into the stairs of her own cosy home-nest, up which she is walki

ess all around her. The rain pours down like a deluge, and a ter

arts from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and

have made less noise with the door." Then, rubb

rain, and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles cl

r. "Waking the children with his

cious of, but she does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he falls, dressed, upon the bed, a

ufficient to cause her t

rmurs; "and Dick'll be as

iently resumes her task of stitch