390 Viliage Sketches. ‘(Ocr. 
- At the end of that time he was discovered, and brought to the bench; 
and Dame Weston again told her story, and, as before, on the full ery. 
She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint had 
disappeared, and there were no women present to make common cause 
with the sex. Still, however, the general feeling was against Master 
‘Weston ; and it would have gone hard with him, when he was called in, 
if a. most unexpected witness had not risen up in his favour. His wife 
had brought in her arms a little girl about eighteen months old, partly 
perhaps to move compassion in her favour ; for a woman with a child in 
her arms is always an object that excites kind feelings. The little girl 
had looked shy and frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during 
her mother’s examination ; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom 
she had been a fortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and 
laughed, and cried, ‘‘ Daddy! daddy!” and sprang into his arms, and 
hung round his neck, and covered him with kisses—again shouting, 
« Daddy, come home! daddy! daddy !’—and finally nestled her little 
head in his bosom, witha fulness of contentment, an assurance of ten- 
derness and protection, such as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, 
or ever could inspire, since the days of King Solomon. Our magistrates 
acted in the very spirit of the Jewish monarch: they accepted the evi- 
dence of nature, and dismissed the complaint. And subsequent events 
have fully justified their decision; Mistress Weston proving not only 
renowned for the feminine accomplishment of scolding (tongue-banging, 
itis called in our parts—a compound word, which deserves to be Greek), 
but is actually herself addicted to administering the conjugal discipline, 
the infliction of which she was pleased. to impute to her luckless husband. 
Now we cross the stile, and walk up -the fields to the Shaw. How 
beautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sun 
glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and 
aspen! and how sweet the hedge-rows are with woodbine and wild sca- 
bions, or, as the country people. call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little 
Annie Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose, 
tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-polled 
urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singimg “Home! 
sweet Home !” at the top of his voice ; and then, when the notes move 
too-high for him, continuing the air ina whistle, until he has turned the 
impassible corner ; then taking up again the song and the words, “Home! 
sweet Home!” and looking as if he felt their full import, ploughboy 
though he be. And so he does ; for he is one of a large, an honest, a kind, 
and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poor 
ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts—all that 
he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly contented “ 
as George Coper! All his luxuries, a cricket-match!—all his wants 
satisfied in “ home! sweet home !’” 
Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brookes’s 
great bean-field, and crying the “ Harvest Home!” in a chorus, before 
which all other sounds—the song, the scolding, the gunnery—fade away, 
and become faint echoes. A’ pleasant noise is that! though, for one’s 
ears’ sake, one. makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in 
happy time, is that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its 
tangled dingles, its nuts, and its honeysuckles ;—and, carrying away a 
fagot of those sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint’s: of whom, and 
of whose doings, we shall say more another time. M. 
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