154 By Stream and Sea. 



yonder, where the castellated mansion looks with a hundred 

 eyes upon the open south, keeps his one, two, three stables 

 of horses, and his servants galore, has, at any rate, prima 

 fade, a better chance of killing time than the elderly exile 

 who possesses only a cob, and a small one at that, and a 

 man-of-all-work who is everything by turns but nothing 

 strong. The squire, too, has been born and bred in the 

 country ; is, so to speak, acclimatised. The tenant of 

 Hazelbarn stepped out of the London streets pretty late in 

 life, with ten thousand pleasant Bohemian memories to 

 haunt and tempt him. 



Will you listen to the manner in which winter passes at 

 Hazelbarn ? I promise to make no reference to the Snow 

 King, or Rude Boreas; on my word there shall be no 

 quotation from Thomson's Seasons, nor from Cowper's 

 Winter Walk at Noon. It is no question of forefinger a la 

 Johnson ; nothing more than an effort to answer once for 

 all the everlasting ." How do you manage to live through the 

 winter ? " 



First, then the curate helps me to survive the trials of 

 the long months of short days ; so does his wife. Between 

 ourselves, I am fonder of the wife than of the husband, and 

 they are both aware of that interesting fact. The curate 

 fishes a little ; his wife shoots in moderation when there 

 is a fear of parishioners intruding, and in earnest when the 

 coast is clear. 



"A nice little body," I find to be the general verdict 

 upon Mrs. Green Vernon, and it would not be a bad de- 

 scription from a person who knew her as a merely nodding 

 acquaintance. 



To her intimate friends she has a nice (but not a little) 

 mind as well, and I should certainly like to see the man 

 who, fairly knowing our curate's wife, would not adore her. 



