Nature and Art, March 1, 1867.' 
BIZZ AND HER FOES, 
69 
him day or night. She had two strong passions : 
she loved her master, and hated donkeys. In the 
middle of the darkest December night, if a donkey, 
for whom its gipsy master opened the gate, 
trespassed on field or lawn, that dog would insist 
on her master’s uprising and going forth in the 
darkness to eject the intruder. With wonderful 
instinct she would lead the gardener to where poor 
Long-ears was enjoying a late supper, and, had her 
strength but equalled her inclination, she would 
have torn him limb from limb. I must say the 
gardener returned her devotion, for a more in- 
dulgent master never lived ; she grew handsome as 
she grew up, and her eyes were wonderful, so large 
and bright, but she never became “blue.” 
We passed seven happy years in that sweet 
valley of the Thames, and there is not a shadow on 
its memory ! Latterly, Efiie ceased to be annoyed 
by the donkeys ; it so chanced that we did an act 
of kindness to a poor gipsy woman, who was 
stabbed (she said accidentally) while sleeping in her 
tent. The young surgeon of our village, with the 
tenderness and benevolence that belonged to his 
nature, saw her, and finding how much she required, 
came to us to help her. When she recovered, and 
before her party struck tents for other quarters, the 
gipsy woman, with her little brown baby in her 
arms, went round to those who had been kind to 
her, to thank them. 
When she came to me, her great luminous eyes 
filled with tears, she kissed my hand repeatedly 
while kneeling at my feet, — 
“The pretty lady,” she said, “won’t believe 
what the poor gipsy could tell her of the lines 
on this palm, which are so filmed over, hard 
though some are, and crossed too, my pretty lady, 
but filmed over, by God’s blessing. Sleep sweet on 
your pillow, you and the good master, you have 
never lost hammer or nail, berry or brush, since you 
passed under your own oak-tree at the great gate, 
and you never shall, lady, nor pigeon or chick, duck 
or hen, no, not so much as a flower, my pretty 
lady : and more, neither mare nor foal, nor even 
the great ass with the mark of the Christian, my 
pretty madam, on its shoulders, will ever open your 
gate again to taste the sweet grass : so the little 
sharp dog and its big master may rest by moon- 
light, or starlight, or no light. Never again ! — 
for your gifts to the poor gipsy woman, and your 
care, and the sunshine you brought into her poor 
tent, have circled round your house, and you need 
never turn key or bolt door, while here you bide.” 
Whenever that woman — Myra Stanley — and 
her tribe visited the green lanes of Addlestone, 
she always paid me a visit, as one lady would to 
another, not to tell fortunes or to beg, and certainly 
not to steal, though I think my poultry-pens were 
a great temptation to her ; she always regarded 
them with, wistful looks, and then as she turned 
away, invariably said — “But you never lose 
anything, and never will, never will, my pretty 
madam ! ” and we never did. After Myra Stanley’s 
recovery Effie and her master rested in peace. No 
“ donkey, mare, or foal ” attempted to “ crop the 
sweet grass by starlight, moonlight, or in the 
dark.” 
The memory of those sweet and happy years has 
taken me away from my story. 
We had been at Firfield more than five years, 
when, rather at an early hour for visitors (though 
some, I confess, are wickedly inconsiderate, and 
think far less of breaking up a morning’s pen-work 
than they would of breaking a teacup), the servant 
brought a large card into the library, “ Mrs. 
Smith ” engraved on it in large letters, amid a 
foliage of flourishes; there it was, “ Mrs. Smith,” — 
plain Smith, without the aristocratic “ y.” The 
name is by no means uncommon ; I heard the 
other day there are 407 “ Mrs. Smiths” in Brighton ! 
“ The lady told me to say,” observed the servant, 
with the becoming gravity of a well-bred domestic, 
who never evinces sympathy with, or for, anything 
- — “the lady told me to say it was Mrs. Smith and 
a box.” 
“ Mrs. Smith and a box,” I repeated. 
“Yes, ma’am, that was the message.” 
Mrs. Smith, a well-developed female, handsomely 
dressed, but with a greater variety of colour in her 
garments than I consider good taste, stood in the 
middle of the drawing-room, a large square box 
with a prominent brass handle on the top by her 
side. 
She looked at me, and I at her. 
“Ah then,” she exclaimed at last, “don’t you 
know me, ma’am l Sure I’d know you among a 
thousand. God for ever bless you, me lady.” 
The unmitigated brogue, the soft voice, the 
loving expression of those lai’ge grey eyes, told me 
who it was, though the form was so increased in 
size and portliness. 
“Ah, you know me now, ma’am, and you’ll 
know her too, though she’s not in it, — that is, the 
whole of her, — and quiet enough now, poor thing ! 
only she has her foes still, the moths and the 
cockroaches stir her up, though I’m watching them 
constantly, bad luck to them !” 
She pressed a spring, and clown went the front 
and sides of the box, and there sat Bizz within the 
rim. of her potato-basket, stuffed, poor animal, not 
with sheep’s-heads, as of old, but with — I know 
not what ! and certainly to great perfection : the 
split remained above the white tooth, — one eye 
was closed. 
“ Yes,” I said, “ if that open eye could but wink, 
it would indeed be Bizz to the life.” 
“ She had a long life, and a happy death ac- 
cording to her kind, ma’am,” said my ci-devant 
cook, while turning the box into a better light, — 
“ and might have been alive now, only she hated 
niecers worse than rats or cats. I told her often 
they war her fellow crayshures, but she wouldn’t 
mind me, and one day, she tried to take a bite out 
of a little nigger’s leg, who was stealing yams — 
if she’d had a tooth in her head to do it with, he’d 
have remembered it— but, poor thing, she couldn’t 
hould her grip, and he slipped away, and grinned at 
her, the little aggravating blackamoor ! And the 
disappointment and the passion choked her ; but her 
