264 The Two Valentines. [MARCH, 



erect, and vigorous carriage, and the light, elastic step, peculiar to those 

 who are early accustomed to walk under burthens. Sally's father is an 

 eminent baker the most celebrated personage in our village ; besides 

 supplying half the next town with genuine country bread, which he car- 

 ries thither himself in his huge tilted cart, he hath struck into other arts 

 of the oven, and furnishes all the breakfast-tables, within five miles, with 

 genuine London rolls. No family of gentility can possibly get through the 

 first meal without them. The rolls, to be sure, are just like other rolls 

 very good, and nothing more ; but some whim of a great man, or caprice 

 of a fine lady, has put them in fashion ; and so Sally walks round the 

 parish every morning, with her great basket, piled to the very brim, poised 

 on her pretty head now lending it the light support of one slender hand, 

 and now of another ; the dancing black eyes, and the bright blushing smile, 

 that flash from under her burthen, as well as the perfect ease and grace 

 with which she trips along, entirely taking away all painful impression of 

 drudgery or toil. She is quite a figure for a painter, is Sally North and 

 the gipsy knows it. There is a gay, good-humoured consciousness of her 

 power and her beauty, as she passes on her morning round, carolling as 

 merrily as the lark over her head, that makes no small part of her charm. 

 The lass is clever, too sharp and shrewd in her dealings and, although 

 sufficiently civil and respectful to her superiors, and never actually wanting 

 in decorum, is said to dismiss the compliments of some of her beaux with 

 a repartee generally brusque, and frequently poignant. 



Of beaux between the lacqueys of the houses that she takes in her 

 circuit, and the wayfarers whom she picks up on the road Sally hath 

 more than a court beauty ; and two of them Mr. Thompson, my lord's 

 gentleman, a man of substance and gravity, not much turned of fifty ; 

 and Daniel Tabb, one of Sir John's gardeners, a strapping red-haired 

 youth, as comely and merry as herself were severally recommended, by 

 the old and the young, as fitting matches for the pretty mistress of the 

 rolls. But Sally silenced Mr. Thompson's fine speeches by a very stout, 

 sturdy, steady " No ;" and even inflicted a similar sentence (although so 

 mildly, that Daniel did not quite despair) on his young rival ; for Sally, 

 who was seventeen last Candlemas- day, had been engaged these three 

 years ! 



The love affair had begun at the Free School at Aberleigh ; and the 

 object of it, by name Stephen Long, was the son of a little farmer in the 

 neighbourhood, and about the same age with his fair mistress. There the 

 resemblance ceased ; for Stephen had been as incomparably the sharpest 

 and ugliest boy in the school, as Sally was the tallest and prettiest girl 

 being, indeed, of that stunted and large-headed appearance which betokens 

 a dwarf, and is usually accompanied by features as unpleasant in their 

 expression as they are grotesque in their form. But then he was the head 

 boy: and, being held up by the master as a miracle of reading, writing, 

 and cyphering, was a personage of no small importance at Aberleigh ; and 

 Sally being, with all her cleverness, something of a dunce, owed to S'te- 

 phen much obligation for assistance in the school business. He arranged, 

 cast up, and set in order on the slate, the few straggling figures which poor 

 Sally called her sum painted over, and reduced to something like form, 

 the mishapen and disjointed letters in her copy-book learnt all her 

 lessons himself, and tried most ineffectually to teach them to her and, 

 finally, covered her unconquerable want of memory by the loudest and 

 boldest prompting ever heard out of a theatre. Many a rap of the 



