576 Village Sketches. (Dec. 
good-natured and genial a person could grumble, when he found a little 
girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his pony, and vulgar 
cocks and hens hovering around the buck wheat destined to feed his 
noble pheasants. Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragon 
of keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant looking, with his merry eye, 
and his knowing smile, striding gaily along, in his green coat, and his 
gold laced hat, with his noble Newfoundland dog, ( a retriever is the 
sporting word), and his beautiful spaniel flirt at his heels, could con- 
ceive how askew he looked, when he first found Hannah and Watch : 
holding equal reign over his old territory, the Shaw common. : 
Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are passing away. 
The old woman at the lodge is dead, poor creature ; and Betty Barnes, 
having herself taken to tippling, has lost the few friends she once 
possessed, and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die, too !— 
and the keeper ?—why, he is not dead, or like to die ; but the change 
that has taken place there is the most astonishing of all-—except, per- 
haps, the change in Hannah herself. 
Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very pretty age, were 
less pretty than Hannah Bint. Short and stunted in her figure, thin in 
face, sharp in feature, with a muddled complexion, wild sun-burnt hair, 
and eyes, whose very brightness had in them something startling, over- 
informed, super-subtle, too clever for her age. At twelve years old she 
had quite the air of a little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are : 
mended. Her complexion has cleared: her countenance, her figure, has 
shot up into height and lightness, and a sort of rustic grace ; her bright, 
acute eye is softened and sweetened by the womanly wish to please ; 
her hair is trimmed, and curled, and brushed, with exquisite neatness ; 
-and her whole dress arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, 
the suitable both in form and texture, which would be called the highest 
degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve the better name of propriety. 
Never was such a transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty, 
and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There he stands, the 
rogue, close at her side (for he hath joined her whilst we have been 
telling her little story, and the milking is over!)—there he stands—hold- . 
ing her milk pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with the other ; whilst 
she is returning the compliment, by patting Neptune’s magnificent head. 
There they stand, as much like lovers as may be ; he smiling, and she 
blushing—he never looking so handsome, nor she so pretty, in all their 
lives. There they stand, in blessed forgetfulness of all except each other; 
as happy a couple as ever trod the earth. There they stand, and one 
would not disturb them for all the milk and butter in Christendom. 
I should not wonder if they were fixing the wedding day. 
M. 
