“I suppose you are not going out riding to-day?” said Rosamond, lingering a little after her mamma was gone.

“No; why?”

“Papa says I may have the chestnut to ride now.”

“You can go with me to-morrow, if you like.  Only I am going to Stone Court, remember.”

“I want to ride so much, it is indifferent to me where we go.”  Rosamond really wished to go to Stone Court, of all other places.

“Oh, I say, Rosy,” said Fred, as she was passing out of the room, “if you are going to the piano, let me come and play some airs with you.”

“Pray do not ask me this morning.”

“Why not this morning?”

“Really, Fred, I wish you would leave off playing the flute.  A man looks very silly playing the flute.  And you play so out of tune.”

“When next any one makes love to you, Miss Rosamond, I will tell him how obliging you are.”

“Why should you expect me to oblige you by hearing you play the flute, any more than I should expect you to oblige me by not playing it?”

“And why should you expect me to take you out riding?”

This question led to an adjustment, for Rosamond had set her mind on that particular ride.

So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour’s practice of “Ar hyd y nos,” “Ye banks and braes,” and other favorite airs from his “Instructor on the Flute;” a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition and an irrepressible hopefulness.

CHAPTER XII.

“He had more tow on his distaffe
Than Gerveis knew.” 
—­CHAUCER.

The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty and to spread out coral fruit for the birds.  Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood:  the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful.  These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to midland-bred souls—­the things they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart standing between their father’s knees while he drove leisurely.