the old house, for they could not remember it, so many years had passed—­so many that the little boy had grown up to a whole man, yes, a clever man, and a pleasure to his parents; and he had just been married, and, together with his little wife, had come to live in the house here, where the garden was; and he stood by her there whilst she planted a field-flower that she found so pretty; she planted it with her little hand, and pressed the earth around it with her fingers.  Oh! what was that?  She had stuck herself.  There sat something pointed, straight out of the soft mould.

It was—­yes, guess!  It was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at the old man’s, and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and the rubbish, and had at last laid for many years in the ground.

The young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier, first with a green leaf, and then with her fine handkerchief—­it had such a delightful smell, that it was to the pewter soldier just as if he had awaked from a trance.

“Let me see him,” said the young man.  He laughed, and then shook his head.  “Nay, it cannot be he; but he reminds me of a story about a pewter soldier which I had when I was a little boy!” And then he told his wife about the old house, and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that he sent over to him because he was so very, very lonely; and he told it as correctly as it had really been, so that the tears came into the eyes of his young wife, on account of the old house and the old man.

“It may possibly be, however, that it is the same pewter soldier!” said she.  “I will take care of it, and remember all that you have told me; but you must show me the old man’s grave!”

“But I do not know it,” said he, “and no one knows it!  All his friends were dead, no one took care of it, and I was then a little boy!”

“How very, very lonely he must have been!” said she.

“Very, very lonely!” said the pewter soldier.  “But it is delightful not to be forgotten!”

“Delightful!” shouted something close by; but no one, except the pewter soldier, saw that it was a piece of the hog’s-leather hangings; it had lost all its gilding, it looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an opinion, and it gave it: 

   “The gilding decays,
   But hog’s leather stays!”

This the pewter soldier did not believe.

THE HAPPY FAMILY

Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it over one’s head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella, for it is so immensely large.  The burdock never grows alone, but where there grows one there always grow several:  it is a great delight, and all this delightfulness is snails’ food.  The great white snails which persons of quality in former times made fricassees of, ate, and said, “Hem, hem! how delicious!” for they thought it tasted so delicate—­lived on dock-leaves, and therefore burdock seeds were sown.