After we had dinner, which was as English as the British lion, and much
more to our taste than anything we had had in London, Jone went out to
smoke a pipe, and I had a talk with Miss Pondar about fish, meat, and
groceries, and about housekeeping matters in general. Miss Pondar,
whose general aspect of minister's wife began to wear off when I talked
to her, mingles respectfulness and respectability in a manner I haven't
been in the habit of seeing. Generally those two things run against
each other, but they don't in her.

When she asked what kind of wine we preferred I must say I was struck
all in a heap, for wines to Jone and me is like a trackless wilderness
without compass or binnacle light, and we seldom drink them except made
hot, with nutmeg grated in, for colic; but as I wanted her to
understand that if there was any luxuries we didn't order it was
because we didn't approve of them, I told her that we was total
abstainers, and at that she smiled very pleasant and said that was her
persuasion also, and that she was glad not to be obliged to handle
intoxicating drinks, though, of course, she always did it without
objection when the family used them. When I told Jone this he looked a
little blank, for foreign water generally doesn't agree with him. I
mentioned this afterwards to Miss Pondar, and she said it was very
common in total abstaining families, when water didn't agree with any
one of them, especially if it happened to be the gentleman, to take a
little good Scotch whiskey with it; but when I told this to Jone he
said he would try to bear up under the shackles of abstinence.

This morning, when I was talking with Miss Pondar about fish, and
trying to show her that I knew something about the names of English
fishes, I said that we was very fond of whitebait. At this she looked
astonished for the first time.

"Whitebait?" said she. "We always looked upon that as belonging
entirely to the nobility and gentry." At this my back began to bristle,
but I didn't let her know it, and I said, in a tone of emphatic
mildness, that we would have whitebait twice a week, on Tuesday and
Friday. At this Miss Pondar gave a little courtesy and thanked me very
much, and said she would attend to it.

When Jone and me came back after taking a long walk that morning I saw
a pair of Church of England prayer-books, looking as if they had just
been neatly dusted, lying on the parlor table, where they hadn't been
before, for I had carefully looked over every book. I think that when
it was borne in upon Miss Pondar's soul that we was accustomed to
having whitebait as a regular thing she made up her mind we was all
right, and that nothing but the Established Church would do for us.
Before, she might have thought we was Wesleyans.

Our maid Hannah is very nice to look at, and does her work as well as
anybody could do it, and, like most other English servants, she's in a
state of never-ending thankfulness, but as I can never understand a
word she says except "Thank you very much," I asked Jone if he didn't
think it would be a good thing for me to try to teach her a little
English.

"Now then," said he, "that's the opening of a big subject. Wait until I
fill my pipe and we'll discourse upon it." It was just after luncheon,
and we was sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden,
looking out over the roses and pinks and all sorts of old-timey flowers
growing as thick as clover heads, with an air as if it wasn't the least
trouble in the world to them to flourish and blossom. Beyond the
flowers was a little brook with the ducks swimming in it, and beyond
that was a field, and on the other side of that field was a park
belonging to the lord of the manor, and scattered about the side of a
green hill in the park was a herd of his lordship's deer. Most of them
was so light-colored that I fancied I could almost see through them, as
if they was the little transparent bugs that crawl about on leaves.
That isn't a romantic idea to have about deers, but I can't get rid of
the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
hills.

At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
very comfortable and contented.

"Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."

"Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."

"Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."

"Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well--"

"What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
lot of things over here that we shall not approve of--we knew that
before we came--and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
getting along very comfortable so far."

"Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."

"Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
up theirs."

I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.

We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
spoke.

I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
over the fields, for there is a right of way--meaning a little
path--through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
character in a novel.

I have kept a great many of my joyful sentiments to myself, because
Jone is too well contented as it is, and there is a great deal yet to
be seen in England. Sometimes we hire a dogcart and a black horse named
Punch, from the inn in the village, and we take long drives over roads
that are almost as smooth as bowling alleys. The country is very hilly,
and every time we get to the top of a hill we can see, spread about us
for miles and miles, the beautiful hills and vales, and lordly
residences and cottages, and steeple tops, looking as though they had
been stuck down here and there, to show where villages had been
planted.




_Letter Number Five_


[Illustration]

CHEDCOMBE

This morning, when Jone was out taking a walk and I was talking to Miss
Pondar, and getting her to teach me how to make Devonshire clotted
cream, which we have for every meal, putting it on everything it will
go on, into everything it will go into, and eating it by itself when
there is nothing it will go on or into; and trying to find out why it
is that whitings are always brought on the table with their tails stuck
through their throats, as if they had committed suicide by cutting
their jugular veins in this fashion, I saw, coming along the road to
our cottage, a pretty little dogcart with two ladies in it. The horse
they drove was a pony, and the prettiest creature I ever saw, being
formed like a full-sized horse, only very small, and with as much fire
and spirit and gracefulness as could be got into an animal sixteen
hands high. I heard afterward that he came from Exmoor, which is about
twelve miles from here, and produces ponies and deers of similar size
and swiftness. They stopped at the door, and one of them got out and
came in. Miss Pondar told me she wished to see me, and that she was
Mrs. Locky, of the "Bordley Arms" in the village.

"The innkeeper's wife?" said I; to which Miss Pondar said it was, and I
went into the parlor. Mrs. Locky was a handsome-looking lady, and
wearing as stylish clothes as if she was a duchess, and extremely
polite and respectful.

She said she would have asked Mrs. Shutterfield to come with her and
introduce her, but that lady was away from home, and so she had come by
herself to ask me a very great favor.

When I begged her to sit down and name it she went on to say there had
come that morning to the inn a very large party in a coach-and-four,
that was making a trip through the country, and as they didn't travel
on Sunday they wanted to stay at the "Bordley Arms" until Monday
morning.

"Now," said she, "that puts me to a dreadful lot of trouble, because I
haven't room to accommodate them all, and even if I could get rooms for
them somewhere else they don't want to be separated. But there is one
of the best rooms at the inn which is occupied by an elderly gentleman,
and if I could get that room I could put two double beds in it and so
accommodate the whole party. Now, knowing that you had a pleasant
chamber here that you don't use, I thought I would make bold to come
and ask you if you would lodge Mr. Poplington until Monday?"

"What sort of a person is this Mr. Poplington, and is he willing to
come here?"

"Oh, I haven't asked him yet," said she, "but he is so extremely
good-natured that I know he will be glad to come here. He has often
asked me who lived in this extremely picturesque cottage."

"You must have an answer now?" said I.

"Oh, yes," said she, "for if you cannot do me this favor I must go
somewhere else, and where to go I don't know."

Now I had begun to think that the one thing we wanted in this little
home of ours was company, and that it was a great pity to have that
nice bedroom on the second floor entirely wasted, with nobody ever in
it. So, as far as I was concerned, I would be very glad to have some
pleasant person in the house, at least for a day or two, and I didn't
believe Jone would object. At any rate it would put a stop, at least
for a little while, to his eternally saying how Corinne, our daughter,
would enjoy that room, and how nice it would be if we was to take this
house for the rest of the season and send for her. Now, Corinne's as
happy as she can be at her grand-mother's farm, and her school will
begin before we're ready to come home, and, what is more, we didn't
come here to spend all our time in one place.

[Illustration: "The young lady who keeps the bar"]

While I was thinking of these things I was looking out of the window at
the lady in the dogcart who was holding the reins. She was as pretty as
a picture, and wore a great straw hat with lovely flowers in it. As I
had to give an answer without waiting for Jone to come home, and I
didn't expect him until luncheon time, I concluded to be neighborly,
and said we would take the gentleman to oblige her. Even if the
arrangement didn't suit him or us, it wouldn't matter much for that
little time. At which Mrs. Locky was very grateful indeed, and said she
would have Mr. Poplington's luggage sent around that afternoon, and
that he would come later.

As she got up to go I said to her, "Is that young lady out there one of
the party who came with the coach and four?"

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Locky, "she lives with me. She is the young lady
who keeps the bar."

I expect I opened my mouth and eyes pretty wide, for I was never so
astonished. A young lady like that keeping the bar! But I didn't want
Mrs. Locky to know how much I was surprised, and so I said nothing
about it.

When they had gone and I had stood looking after them for about a
minute, I remembered I hadn't asked whether Mr. Poplington would want
to take his meals here, or whether he would go to the inn for them. To
be sure, she only asked me to lodge him, but as the inn is more than
half a mile from here, he may want to be boarded. But this will have to
be found out when he comes, and when Jone comes home it will have to be
found out what he thinks about my taking a lodger while he's out taking
a walk.




_Letter Number Six_


CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

When Jone came home and I told him a gentleman was coming to live with
us, he thought at first I was joking; and when he found out that I
meant what I said he looked very blue, and stood with his hands in his
pockets and his eyes on the ground, considering.

"He's not going to take his meals here, is he?"

"I don't think he expects that," I said, "for Mrs. Locky only spoke of
lodging."

"Oh, well," said Jone, looking as if his clouds was clearing off a
little, "I don't suppose it will matter to us if that room is occupied
over Sunday, but I think the next time I go out for a stroll I'll take
you with me."

I didn't go out that afternoon, and sat on pins and needles until
half-past five o'clock. Jone wanted me to walk with him, but I wouldn't
do it, because I didn't want our lodger to come here and be received by
Miss Pondar. At half-past five there came a cart with the gentleman's
luggage, as they call it here, and I was glad Jone wasn't at home.
There was an enormous leather portmanteau which looked as if it had
been dragged by a boy too short to lift it from the ground, half over
the world; a hat-box, also of leather, but not so draggy looking; a
bundle of canes and umbrellas, a leather dressing-case, and a flat,
round bathing-tub. I had the things taken up to the room as quickly as
I could, for if Jone had seen them he'd think the gentleman was going
to bring his family with him.

It was nine o'clock and still broad daylight when Mr. Poplington
himself came, carrying a fishing-rod put up in parts in a canvas bag, a
fish-basket, and a small valise. He wore leather leggings and was about
sixty years old, but a wonderful good walker. I thought, when I saw him
coming, that he had no rheumatism whatever, but I found out afterward
that he had a little in one of his arms. He had white hair and white
side-whiskers and a fine red face, which made me think of a strawberry
partly covered with Devonshire clotted cream. Jone and I was sitting in
the summer-house, he smoking his pipe, and we both went to meet the
gentleman. He had a bluff way of speaking, and said he was much obliged
to us for taking him in; and after saying that it was a warm evening, a
thing which I hadn't noticed, he asked to be shown to his room. I sent
Hannah with him, and then Jone and I went back to the summer-house.

I didn't know exactly why, but I wasn't in as good spirits as I had
been, and when Jone spoke he didn't make me feel any better.

[Illustration: "I see signs of weakening in the social boom"]

"It seems to me," said he, "that I see signs of weakening in the social
boom. That man considers us exactly as we considered our lodging-house
keeper in London. Now, it doesn't strike me that that sample person you
was talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor
gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help
agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't
said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a
benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of my
soul.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said I, turning sharp on Jone, "we won't
charge him a cent. That'll take him down, and show him what we are.
We'll give him the room as a favor to Mrs. Locky, considering her in
the light of a neighbor and one who sent us a cucumber."

"All right," said Jone, "I like that way of arranging the business. Up
goes the social boom again!"

Just as we was going up to bed Miss Pondar came to me and said that the
gentleman had called down to her and asked if he could have a new-laid
egg for his breakfast, and she asked if she should send Hannah early in
the morning to see if she could get a perfectly fresh egg from one of
the cottages. "I thought, ma'am, that perhaps you might object to
buying things on Sunday."

"I do," I said. "Does that Mr. Poplington expect to have his breakfast
here? I only took him to lodge."

"Oh, ma'am," said Miss Pondar, "they always takes their breakfasts
where they has their rooms. Dinner and luncheon is different, and he
may expect to go to the inn for them."

"Indeed!" said I. "I think he may, and if he breakfasts here he can
take what we've got. If the eggs are not fresh enough for him he can
try to get along with some bacon. He can't expect that to be fresh."

Knowing that English people take their breakfast late, Jone and I got
up early, so as to get through before our lodger came down. But, bless
me, when we went to the front door to see what sort of a day it was we
saw him coming in from a walk. "Fine morning," said he, and in fact
there was only a little drizzle of rain, which might stop when the sun
got higher; and he stood near us and began to talk about the trout in
the stream, which, to my utter amazement, he called a river.

"Do you take your license by the day or week?" he said to Jone.

"License!" said Jone, "I don't fish."

"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Oh, I see, you are a cycler."

"No," said Jone, "I'm not that, either, I'm a pervader."

"Really!" said the old gentleman; "what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that I pervade the scenery, sometimes on foot and sometimes in
a trap. That's my style of rural pleasuring."

"But you do fish at home," I said to Jone, not wishing the English
gentleman to think my husband was a city man, who didn't know anything
about sport.

"Oh, yes," said Jone, "I used to fish for perch and sunfish."

"Sunfish?" said Mr. Poplington. "I don't know that fish at all. What
sort of a fly do you use?"

"I don't fish with any flies at all," said Jone; "I bait my hook with
worms."

Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking
on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd
never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm
in my life. There's no sort of science in worm fishing."

"There's double sport," said Jone, "for first you've got to catch your
worm. Then again, I hate shams; if you have to catch fish there's no
use cheating them into the bargain."

"Cheat!" cried Mr. Poplington. "If I had to catch a whale I'd fish for
him with a fly. But you Americans are strange people. Worms, indeed!"

"We don't all use worms," said Jone; "there's lots of fly fishers in
America, and they use all sorts of flies. If we are to believe all the
Californians tell us some of the artificial flies out there must be as
big as crows."

"Really?" said Mr. Poplington, looking hard at Jone, with a little
twinkling in his eyes. "And when gentlemen fish who don't like to cheat
the fishes, what size of worms do they use?"

"Well," said Jone, "in the far West I've heard that the common black
snake is the favorite bait. He's six or seven feet long, and fishermen
that use him don't have to have any line. He's bait and line all in
one."

Mr. Poplington laughed. "I see you are fond of a joke," said he, "and
so am I, but I'm also fond of my breakfast."

"I'm with you there," said Jone, and we all went in.

Mr. Poplington was very pleasant and chatty, and of course asked a
great many questions about America. Nearly all English people I've met
want to talk about our country, and it seems to me that what they do
know about it isn't any better, considered as useful information, than
what they don't know. But Mr. Poplington has never been to America, and
so he knows more about us than those Englishmen who come over to write
books, and only have time to run around the outside of things, and get
themselves tripped up on our ragged edges.

He said he had met a good many Americans, and liked them, but he
couldn't see for the life of him why they do some things English people
don't do, and don't do things English people do do. For instance, he
wondered why we don't drink tea for breakfast. Miss Pondar had made it
for him, knowing he'd want it, and he wonders why Americans drink
coffee when such good tea as that was comes in their reach.

Now, if I had considered Mr. Poplington as a lodger it might have
nettled me to have him tell me I didn't know what was good, but
remembering that we was giving him hospitality, and not board, and
didn't intend to charge him a cent, but was just taking care of him out
of neighborly kindness, I was rather glad to have him find a little
fault, because that would make me feel as if I was soaring still higher
above him the next morning, when I should tell him there was nothing to
pay.

So I took it all good-natured, and said to him, "Well, Americans like
to have the very best things that can be got out of every country.
We're like bees flying over the whole world, looking into every blossom
to see what sweetness there is to be got out of it. From the lily of
France we sip their coffee, from the national flower of India, whatever
it is, we take their chutney sauce, and as to those big apple tarts,
baked in a deep dish, with a cup in the middle to hold up the upper
crust, and so full of apples, and so delicious with Devonshire clotted
cream on them that if there was any one place in the world they could
be had I believe my husband would want to go and live there forever,
_they_ are what we extract from the rose of England."

Mr. Poplington laughed like anything at this, but said there was a
great many other things that he could show us and tell us about which
would be very well worth while sipping from the rose of England.

After breakfast he went to church with us, and as we was coming
home--for he didn't seem to have the least idea of going to the inn for
his luncheon--he asked if we didn't find the services very different
from those in America.

"Yes," said I, "they are about as different from Quaker services as a
squirting fountain is from a corked bottle. The Methodists and
Unitarians and Reformed Dutch and Campbellites and Hard-shell Baptists
have different services too, but in the Episcopal churches things are
all pretty much the same as they did this morning. You forget, sir,
that in our country there are religions to suit all sizes of minds. We
haven't any national religion any more than we have a national flower."

"But you ought to have," said he; "you ought to have an established
church."

"You may be sure we'll have it," said Jone, "as soon as we agree as to
which one it ought to be."




_Letter Number Seven_


CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Poplington asked us if we would not like to
walk over to a ruined abbey about four miles away, which he said was
very interesting. It seemed to me that four miles there and four miles
back was a pretty long walk, but I wanted to see the abbey, and I
wasn't going to let him think that a young American woman couldn't walk
as far as an elderly English gentleman; so I agreed and so did Jone.
The abbey is a wonderful place, and I never thought of being tired
while wandering in the rooms and in the garden, where the old monks
used to live and preach, and give food to the poor, and keep house
without women--which was pious enough, but must have been untidy. But
the thing that surprised me the most was what Mr. Poplington told us
about the age of the place. It was not built all at once, and it's part
ancient and part modern, and you needn't wonder, madam, that I was
astonished when he said that the part called modern was finished just
three years before America was discovered. When I heard that I seemed
to shrivel up as if my country was a new-born babe alongside of a
bearded patriarch; but I didn't stay shrivelled long, for it can't be
denied that a new-born babe has a good deal more to look forward to
than a patriarch has.

[Illustration: AT THE ABBEY]

It is amazing how many things in this part of the country we'd never
have thought of if it hadn't been for Mr. Poplington. At dinner he told
us about Exmoor and the Lorna Doone country, and the wild deer hunting
that can be had nowhere else in England, and lots of other things that
made me feel we must be up and doing if we wanted to see all we ought
to see before we left Chedcombe. When I went upstairs I said to Jone
that Mr. Poplington was a very different man from what I thought he
was.

"He's just as nice as he can be, and I'm going to charge him for his
room and his meals and for everything he's had."

Jone laughed, and asked me if that was the way I showed people I liked
them.

"We intended to humble him by not charging him anything," I said, "and
make him feel he had been depending on our bounty; but now I wouldn't
hurt his feelings for the world, and I'll make out his bill in the
morning myself. Women always do that sort of thing in England."

As you asked me, madam, to tell you everything that happened on our
travels, I'll go on about Mr. Poplington. After breakfast on Monday
morning he went over to the inn, and said he would come back and pack
up his things; but when he did come back he told us that those
coach-and-four people had determined not to leave Chedcombe that day,
but was going to stay and look at the sights in the neighborhood, and
that they would want the room for that night. He said this had made him
very angry, because they had no right to change their minds that way
after having made definite arrangements in which other people besides
themselves was concerned; and he had said so very plainly to the
gentleman who seemed to be at the head of the party.

"I hope it will be no inconvenience to you, madam," he said, "to keep
me another night."

"Oh, dear, no," said I; "and my husband was saying this morning that he
wished you was going to stay with us the rest of our time here."

"Really!" exclaimed Mr. Poplington. "Then I'll do it. I'll go to the
inn this minute and have the rest of my luggage brought over here. If
this is any punishment to Mrs. Locky she deserves it, for she shouldn't
have told those people they could stay longer without consulting me."

In less than an hour there came a van to our cottage with the rest of
his luggage. There must have been over a dozen boxes and packages,
besides things tied up and strapped; and as I saw them being carried up
one at a time, I said to Miss Pondar that in our country we'd have two
or three big trunks, which we could take about without any trouble.

"Yes, ma'am," said she; but I could see by her face that she didn't
believe luggage would be luggage unless you could lug it, but was too
respectful to say so.

When Mr. Poplington got settled down in our spare room he blossomed out
like a full-blown friend of the family, and accordingly began to give
us advice. He said we should go as soon as we could and see Exmoor and
all that region of country, and that if we didn't mind he'd like to go
with us; to which we answered, of course, we should like that very
much, and asked him what he thought would be the best way to go. So we
had ever so much talk about that, and although we all agreed it would
be nicer not to take a public coach, but travel private, we didn't find
it easy to decide as to the manner of travel. We all agreed that a
carriage and horses would be too expensive, and Jone was rather in
favor of a dogcart for us if Mr. Poplington would like to go on
horseback; but the old gentleman said it would be too much riding for
him, and if we took a dogcart he'd have to take another one. But this
wouldn't be a very sociable way of travelling, and none of us liked it.

"Now," exclaimed Mr. Poplington, striking his hand on the table, "I'll
tell you exactly how we ought to go through that country--we ought to
go on cycles."

"Bicycles?" said I.

"Tricycles, if you like," he answered, "but that's the way to do it.
It'll be cheap, and we can go as we like and stop when we like. We'll
be as free and independent as the Stars and Stripes, and more so, for
they can't always flap when they like and stop flapping when they
choose. Have you ever tried it, madam?"

I replied that I had, a little, because my daughter had a tricycle, and
I had ridden on it for a short distance and after sundown, but as for
regular travel in the daytime I couldn't think of it.

At this Jone nearly took my breath away by saying that he thought that
the bicycle idea was a capital one, and that for his part he'd like it
better than any other way of travelling through a pretty country. He
also said he believed I could work a tricycle just as well as not, and
that if I got used to it I would think it fine.

I stood out against those two men for about a half an hour, and then I
began to give in a little, and think that it might be nice to roll
along on my own little wheels over their beautiful smooth roads, and
stop and smell the hedges and pick flowers whenever I felt like it; and
so it ended in my agreeing to do the Exmoor country on a tricycle while
Mr. Poplington and Jone went on bicycles. As to getting the machines,
Mr. Poplington said he would attend to that. There was people in London
who hired them to excursionists, and all he had to do was to send an
order and they would be on hand in a day or two; and so that matter
was settled and he wrote to London. I thought Mr. Poplington was a
little old for that sort of exercise, but I found he had been used to
doing a great deal of cycling in the part of the country where he
lives; and besides, he isn't as old as I thought he was, being not much
over fifty. The kind of air that keeps a country always green is
wonderful in bringing out early red and white in a person.

"Everything happens wonderfully well, madam," said he, coming in after
he had been to post his letter in a red iron box let into the side of
the Wesleyan chapel, "doesn't it? Now here we're not able to start on
our journey for two or three days, and I have just been told that the
great hay-making in the big meadow to the south of the village is to
begin to-morrow. They make the hay there only every other year, and
they have a grand time of it. We must be there, and you shall see some
of our English country customs."

We said we'd be sure to be in for that sort of thing.

I wish, madam, you could have seen that great hayfield. It belongs to
the lord of the manor, and must have twenty or thirty acres in it.
They've been three or four days cutting the grass on it with a machine,
and now there's been nearly two days with hardly any rain, only now and
then some drizzling, and a good, strong wind, which they think here is
better for the hay-making than sunshine, though they don't object to a
little sun. All the people in the village who had legs good enough to
carry them to that field went to help make hay. It was a regular
holiday, and as hay is clean, nearly everybody was dressed in good
clothes. Early in the morning some twenty regular farm laborers began
raking the hay at one end of the field, stretching themselves nearly
the whole way across it, and as the day went on more and more people
came, men and women, high and low. All the young women and some of the
older ones had rakes, and the way they worked them was amazing to see,
but they turned over the hay enough to dry it. As to schoolgirls and
boys, there was no end of them in the afternoon, for school let out
early. Some of them worked, but most of them played and cut up
monkey-shines on the hay. Even the little babies was brought on the
field, and nice, soft beds made for them under the trees at one side.

When Jone saw the real farm-work going on, with a chance for everybody
to turn in to help, his farmer blood boiled within him, as if he was a
war-horse and sniffed the smoke of battle, and he got himself a rake
and went to work like a good-fellow. I never saw so many men at work in
a hayfield at home, but when I looked at Jone raking I could see why it
was it didn't take so many men to get in our hay. As for me, I raked a
little, but looked about a great deal more.

Near the middle of the field was two women working together, raking as
steadily as if they had been brought up to it. One of these was young,
and even handsomer than Miss Dick, which was the name of the bar lady.
To look at her made me think of what I had read of Queen Marie
Antoinette and her court ladies playing the part of milkmaids. Her
straw hat was trimmed with delicate flowers, and her white muslin dress
and pale blue ribbons made her the prettiest picture I ever saw
out-of-doors. I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she
told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the
cook. When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a
little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it
is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to
put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why
the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from
me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young
chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a
woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I
would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the
difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I
am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind
of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.

I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here,
having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam,
and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and
seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the
young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who
would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even
school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be
working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English
people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is
like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and
there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.

Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class
servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service
she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.

I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting
to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to
find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in
the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to
work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with
nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things
which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day
behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their
lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The
only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that
here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and
very good house servants they are, too.




_Letter Number Eight_


[Illustration]

CHEDCOMBE

I will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward
the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game
which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys
would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had
thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole
world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad
to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be
when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys
had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if
they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.

At five o'clock everybody--farm hands, ladies, gentlemen,
school-children, and all--took tea together. Some were seated at long
tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered
all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the
tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed
white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit,
and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic
establishment.

After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is
always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and
helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female
person in black silk--and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the
lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out
in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter--and she told me ever
so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't
there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just
beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a
school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened
to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with
her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with
her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking
together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing
hymns out of the same book.

Now, I thought I had been sitting still long enough, and so I snipped
off the rest of the doctor story and got myself across that field with
pretty long steps. When I reached the happy three I didn't say
anything, but went round in front of them and stood there, throwing a
sarcastic and disdainful glance upon their farming. Jone stopped
working, and wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if he was hot and
tired, but hadn't thought of it until just then, and the two girls they
stopped too.

"He's teaching us to rake, ma'am," said Miss Dick, revolving her
green-gage eyes in my direction, "and really, ma'am, it's wonderful to
see how good he does it. You Americans are so awful clever!"

As for the one with the blue trimmings, she said nothing, but stood
with her hands folded on her rake, and her chiselled features steeped
in a meek resignedness, though much too high colored, as though it had
just been borne in upon her that this world is all a fleeting show, for
man's illusion given, and such felicity as culling fragrant hay by the
side of that manly form must e'en be foregone by her, that I could
have taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue
ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined
themselves around one resounding howl--but I didn't. I simply remarked
to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was
going home; to which he said he was going too, and we went.

[Illustration: "THERE, WITH THE BAR LADY AND THE MARIE ANTOINETTE
CHAMBERMAID, WAS JONE"]

"I thought," said I, as we proceeded with rapid steps across the field,
"that you didn't come to England for the purpose of teaching the
inhabitants."

Jone laughed a little. "That young lady put it rather strong," he said.
"She and her friend was merely trying to rake as I did. I think they
got on very well."

"Indeed!" said I--I expect with flashing eye--"but the next time you go
into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really
need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young
women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for
all the hankering after knowledge they have."

"Oh!" said Jone, and that was all he did say, which was very wise in
him, for, considering my state of feelings, his case was like a
fish-hook in your finger--the more you pull and worry at it the harder
it is to get out.

That evening, when I was quite cooled down, and we was talking to Mr.
Poplington about the hay-making and the free-and-easy way in which
everybody came together, he was a good deal surprised that we should
think that there was anything uncommon in that, coming from a country
where everybody was free and equal. Jone was smoking his pipe, and when
it draws well and he's had a good dinner and I haven't anything
particular to say, he often likes to talk slow and preach little
sermons.

"Yes, sir," said he, after considering the matter a little while,
"according to the Constitution of the United States we are all free and
equal, but there's a good many things the Constitution doesn't touch
on, and one of them is the sorting out and sizing up of the population.
Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
keep up aristocracies.

I don't know that he heard all that I said, for he was going up-stairs
with his candle at the time, but when Jone and me got up-stairs in our
own room I said to him, and he always hears everything I say, that in
some ways the girls that we have for servants at home have some
advantages over those we find here; to which Jone said, "Yes," and
seemed to be sleepy.




_Letter Number Nine_


CHEDCOMBE

There was still another day of hay-making, but we couldn't wait for
that, because our cycles had come from London and we was all anxious to
be off, and you would have laughed, madam, if you could have seen us
start. Mr. Poplington went off well enough, but Jone's bicycle seemed a
little gay and hard to manage, and he frisked about a good deal at
starting; but Jone had bought a bicycle long ago, when the things first
came out, and on days when the roads was good he used to go to the
post-office on it, and he said that if a man had ever ridden on top of
a wheel about six feet high he ought to be able to balance himself on
the pair of small wheels which they use nowadays. So, after getting his
long legs into working order, he went very well, though with a snaky
movement at first, and then I started.

Each one of us had a little hand-bag hung on our machine, and Mr.
Poplington said we needn't take anything to eat, for there was inns to
be found everywhere in England. Hannah started me off nicely by pushing
my tricycle until I got it going, and Miss Pondar waved her
handkerchief from the cottage door. When Hannah left me I went along
rather slow at first, but when I got used to the proper motion I began
to do better, and was very sure it wouldn't take me long to catch up
with Jone, who was still worm-fencing his way along the road. When I
got entirely away from the houses, and began to smell the hedges and
grassy banks so close to my nose, and feel myself gliding along over
the smooth white road, my spirits began to soar like a bird, and I
almost felt like singing.

The few people I met didn't seem to think it was anything wonderful for
a woman to ride on a tricycle, and I soon began to feel as proper as if
I was walking on a sidewalk. Once I came very near tangling myself up
with the legs of a horse who was pulling a cart. I forgot that it was
the proper thing in this country to turn to the left, and not to the
right, but I gave a quick twist to my helm and just missed the
cart-wheel, but it was a close scratch. This turning to the right,
instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when
he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my
grazing the cart it's not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a
sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of
the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my
spirits rose again.

I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could
do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without
being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is
nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me
things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that
although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account
of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam
and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of
the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road
forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to
somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which
made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if
I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but
I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on
and down and on and down, with no end to it.

I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and
showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I
didn't fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but
I don't believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and
faster; and then, as the machine didn't need any working, I took my
feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can't now
remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant
that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing
down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to
get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn't do it, and all I could
do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far
as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a
carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope
that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of
comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog
jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there
barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.
If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would
have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train,
and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn't
turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think
what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a
reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little
bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.