A Farmer’s Life 
sights or sounds. Nor was the comment always 
unconscious or even silent. The least little 
thing would set her off. The sight of a road-man 
wearing a too large hat reminded her first of her 
father’s beavers, and then prompted her to tell 
how she herself, in all her life, had never worn 
hat at all. When she was a little child her head- 
gear was a close-fitting quilted bonnet made of 
patchwork by her mother, and covering her ears ; 
and from then onwards she had always worn 
bonnets. 
All sorts of details about her young days came 
to light in this fashion. Something in the street 
drew from her the exclamation, “ What a long 
time ago it is since I saw a waggon with three 
horses in a long team in front of it!”’—from 
which it was plain to me that she was seeing again 
in memory her father’s team taking pots to 
London. Another day the same memory brought 
with it, further, how Mrs. Stonehouse, wife of the 
vicar of Frimley, pleased her by speaking of 
“your father’s beautiful team.” 
Old Farnborough village lived still in her 
memory, as it was in her childhood, ere ever the 
aircraft factory changed its character, and before 
ex-Empress Eugénie came to Farnborough 
Hill. Ann Smith told, rather, of Lady Palmer’s 
small house lower down; and of course she knew 
of the coming of the Longmans. The Long- 
mans, newly arrived, introduced the Christmas 
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