kept Mr. Fullafield silent for a moment, when
the smith said:

"The women woon't be ready yet awhile.
Coom and look at the cow-'us I've run up
t'other side the slush."

Thomas glanced at his own apparel, and
thought that this agreeable excursion might
have been more happily timed. There's a
season for everything. Slush and a cow-house
are excellent things in their way, but do not
harmonise well with an exalted condition of
mind; nor is their aroma, though healthy,
suggestive of tender and poetic sentiment. But
the opportunity was too good to be lost. The
two gentlemen walked away.

Thomas's great pale blue eyes would have
opened wider still had he known that the
cow-'us was a myth, and the smith no more
intent than himself on soiling his Sunday
boots in the locality he had described. Mr.
Fullafield had been the last subject of conversation
between Mr. and Mrs. Taffey, as they
concluded their walk; and the former, like
Thomas, had taken a resolution. Mr. Fullafield
had been enough "about the place," and the
worthy smith, who knew his daughter's feeling,
and drew a wide distinction between an
honest, though misplaced, affection, and a
fine-gentleman caprice for a rustic beauty, resolved
to warn off Thomas, for his own good, as he
would have done the squire's sons, in Katy's
interests.

Both strode on for a moment in silence.
Then Thomas, fearing that the slush, to which
they were undoubtedly approaching, might
interfere with the dialogue, commenced it.

It was a peculiarity, well known to his
friends, that though Thomas might have been
in conversation with one of them for an hour,
he always commenced any new and interesting
topic with a repetition of the morning greeting;
consequently,

"Mornin', feother," said Thomas.

"Mornin', Thomas," responded Mr. Taffey;
then making, so to speak, a butt at the subject,
added, "but I'm not thy feother, nor an't like
to be."

"Now, don't ye say that," said Thomas, in
a choky voice.

"I say't, and I mean't; and 'tis for your
sake I doos say 't" returned his companion.
"Come now, my lad, here's good two year
you've been tryin' to put the shoe upon the
wrong horse, and she won't have it, at no
price."

"That ben't fair, I do say," said Thomas,
warmly. "I've called you feother, 'fore her
face, and she never——''

"If you'd called me your grandmother
'twould ha' been all the same," replied the
plain-spoken smith. "Katy wean't ha' none
o' thee."

"If Mrs. Taffey and yourself was to——"

"Stop a moment," said Mr. Taffey, halting
suddenly. "Putt the twitch on Katy, to make her
marry a man she don't want? Not if I knows
it. Now, lad, I doon't want to quar'l wi' thee.
'Twas natteral thou liked'st our lass— equal
natteral she didn't take to thee; for though
there be a kist o' good in thee, when one gets
at it, thou'rt a bit thick in the rind. When
Katy marries, 'twill be somethin' different from
thee. Coom, now, you says to yourself,
'Taffey's right,' you says. 'I'll go wheer I'll
be cared about, and be looked up to, and be
made much of, and have trouble took concernin',"
concluded Mr. Taffey, argumentatively.
"That's how / reads you."

Mr. Fullafield did not answer. His chin
had sunk upon his breast, and his eyes were
fixed upon his gorgeous waistcoat. It seemed
to him that even the unconscious garment had
been affected by the shock, and that the roses
and sunflowers shot up a lurid, angry glow, as
if they said, "Thomas, Thomas, was it for this
that such as we were wrought and worn?"

What other thoughts passed through his
brain we (who have been singularly successful
in attachments) cannot say. But when Thomas
did look up, his face was such that the stout
smith involuntarily recoiled, and asked him
what was the matter.

"Matter! nothing," said Thomas, with a
grin.

"Nothin' don't turn a man the colour of a
biled turnip!" remarked Mr. Taffey. "Coom,
my lad, take 't like a man. No need, 'cause
you can't marry our Katy, that we shouldn't
be good neighbours," said the worthy smith.
"Coom, let's trot home. I think we needn't
go to the cow-'ouse?"

"I think not," said Mr. Fullafield.

"Then coom to dinner."

"I've had dinner enow, for one day," replied
Thomas. And the expression that had shocked
the smith came back into his face. Mr. Taffey
did not press his invitation.

At the turn, up to the farm-house, they
parted.

"You'll coom up to forge to-morrow, lad,
with a smile on your face, 'stead of a glower
like bottled thunder; and you'll say, 'All right,
Taffey, you know'd best.' That's how I reads
you" said the smith. "But don't coom early.
I'm going up to squire's."

The other turned round suddenly.

"Going up to squire's! What for?"

"That's tellin'" replied Mr. Taffey, jocosely,
and without any real desire to make a mystery
of it. "P'raps about a meadow, or— or
marriage," he added, smiling, as the suggestion of
the little schoolmaster occurred to him.

Young Fullafield looked at him fixedly for an
instant, then, without speaking, turned and
walked away.

"Going to squire's? To talk o' marriage?"
lie muttered. "Whose marriage? Her'n?
They call her 'my lady,' and they 'spect to
make her one. I'll spoil that game." And
Thomas shot back at the farm where his lost
love was innocently boiling leeks for the Sunday
dinner a glance so fiery that it might have
ignited the thatch above her.

He had loved the girl, according to his
nature, heartily; and love, being in all essential
points, the same, whether it be clad in satin or