Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the “heart of June,” and I could say with the poet,

  But them, that didst appear so fair
    To fond imagination,
  Dost rival in the light of day
    Her delicate creation!

Bridget’s was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again—­some altered features, of course, a little grudged at.  At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections—­and she traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown)—­with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd.  But Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house—­and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk.  Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome.  It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion.  A comely brood are the Brutons.  Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county.  But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all—­more comely.  She was born too late to have remembered me.  She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a style.  But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough.  Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire.  In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names.  So Christians should call one another.  To have seen Bridget, and her—­it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins!  There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this farmer’s wife, which would have shined in a palace—­or so we thought it.  We were made welcome by husband and wife equally—­we, and our friend that was with us—­I had almost forgotten him—­but B.F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts.  The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us,