‘It’s wonderful,’ said he, ’how exactly Virgil has hit the enduring epithets, nearly two thousand years ago, and in Italy; and yet how it describes to a T what is now lying before us in the parish of Heathbridge, county——­, England.’

‘I dare say it does,’ said I, all aglow with shame, for I had forgotten the little Latin I ever knew.

The minister shifted his eyes to Phillis’s face; it mutely gave him back the sympathetic appreciation that I, in my ignorance, could not bestow.

‘Oh! this is worse than the catechism,’ thought I; ’that was only remembering words.’

’Phillis, lass, thou must go home with these lads, and tell their mother all about the race and the milk.  Mammy must always know the truth,’ now speaking to the children.  ’And tell her, too, from me that I have got the best birch rod in the parish; and that if she ever thinks her children want a flogging she must bring them to me, and, if I think they deserve it, I’ll give it them better than she can.’  So Phillis led the children towards the dairy, somewhere in the back yard, and I followed the minister in through the ‘curate’ into the house-place.  ’Their mother,’ said he, ’is a bit of a vixen, and apt to punish her children without rhyme or reason.  I try to keep the parish rod as well as the parish bull.’

He sate down in the three-cornered chair by the fire-side, and looked around the empty room.

‘Where’s the missus?’ said he to himself.  But she was there home—­by a look, by a touch, nothing more—­as soon as she in a minute; it was her regular plan to give him his welcome could after his return, and he had missed her now.  Regardless of my presence, he went over the day’s doings to her; and then, getting up, he said he must go and make himself ‘reverend’, and that then we would have a cup of tea in the parlour.  The parlour was a large room with two casemented windows on the other side of the broad flagged passage leading from the rector-door to the wide staircase, with its shallow, polished oaken steps, on which no carpet was ever laid.  The parlour-floor was covered in the middle by a home-made carpeting of needlework and list.  One or two quaint family pictures of the Holman family hung round the walls; the fire-grate and irons were much ornamented with brass; and on a table against the wall between the windows, a great beau-pot of flowers was placed upon the folio volumes of Matthew Henry’s Bible.  It was a compliment to me to use this room, and I tried to be grateful for it; but we never had our meals there after that first day, and I was glad of it; for the large house-place, living room, dining-room, whichever you might like to call it, was twice as comfortable and cheerful.  There was a rug in front of the great large fire-place, and an oven by the grate, and a crook, with the kettle hanging from it, over the bright wood-fire; everything that ought to be black and Polished in that room was black and Polished; and the flags, and window-curtains,