“I’ve bin a-thinkin’ o’ summat.  Dear heart alive, Mary, the queer notions as do seem to be a-comin’ into our heads all this week!  D’ye mind my sayin’, ‘I never knowed as you was a harse’?  Ha! ha!  Ye couldn’t say much to that, could ‘ee?  And when I think o’ you standin’ in yard jist now, wavin’ the teapot and tuckin’ the little pig under your arm!  ‘Bottle-feedin’ suckin’-pigs weren’t in the marriage contract,’ says you.  Ho! ho! ho!  Whatever put it i’ your head to say that, I can’t think.”

“I didn’t really mean it, my dear,” said Mary penitently, though she laughed still.

“I dare say not, but I’ve bin a-thinkin’ ’tis a pity your pet bain’t a size or two smaller—­he be sixteen hands if he be a inch—­else maybe ye’d like to have en in here a-layin’ on the hearthrug.”

Then husband and wife laughed long and loud, and their little difference was forgotten as their eyes met.

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM

On one particular Sunday in August, a brilliant sunny, breezeless day, such a day as would under ordinary circumstances conduce to certain drowsiness even in the most piously disposed, the church-goers of Little Branston were preternaturally alert, if not quite so attentive as usual.  For behold!  Corporal Richard Baverstock, Widow Baverstock’s only son, and the father of Matilda Ann, the three-year-old darling of the village, had returned from the wars with a very brown face, a medal, two or three honourable scars, and, it was whispered, a pocketful of “dibs.”

Every one knew about Corporal Dick, the sharp boy who had been the general pet and plaything in early years, much as his own “Tilly Ann” was now; the dashing soldier, whose occasional visits to his native place in all the glories of uniform had caused on each occasion a flutter of excitement which had endured long after his own departure; the hero of romance, whose sudden appearance with a beautiful bride, wedded secretly somewhere up the country, had made more than one pretty maid’s heart grow sore within her, and caused many wiseacres to shake their heads; the disconsolate young widower whose year-old wife had been laid to rest in the churchyard yonder, immediately after the birth of their child; the boy-father, bending half wonderingly over the blue-eyed baby on his mother’s knee; the warrior, wounded “out abroad,” whose letters had been passed from hand to hand in the little place, and conned over and admired and marvelled at till old Mrs. Baverstock, when each mail came to hand, found herself raised to a pinnacle of honour to which otherwise she would never have dared to aspire—­he had come home now for a brief blissful fortnight before rejoining his regiment at the depot.  Not one of the congregation there present but had heard of his return on the previous day, and of how he had almost knocked over the old mother in the vehemence of his greeting, and how he had caught up Tilly Ann and hugged her, and some said cried over her; and how he had almost within the hour walked up to the little cemetery and knelt by his wife’s grave, which, the neighbours opined, “howed a wonderful deal o’ feelin’ in the man as ’twas a’most to be expected he’d ha chose a second by now.”