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.