it’s not ginger beer, but I can’t help it.  My mother and my grandmother before me sent good malt liquor to haymakers; and took salts and senna when anything ailed them; and I must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs. Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it.  But I must go, miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing; I’ll come back to you before long.

Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of milk, (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own private refreshment,) ready for Margaret on her coming down stairs; and after this rustic luncheon they set out to walk, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were there in each.

‘Shall we go past the vicarage?’ asked Mr. Bell.

’No, not yet.  We will go this way, and make a round so as to come back by it,’ replied Margaret.

Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a squatter’s roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared.  Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old friends.  They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched.  The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose roots they had sate down was there no more; the old man, the inhabitant of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the cottage had been pulled down, and a new one, tidy and respectable, had been built in its stead.  There was a small garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.

‘I did not think I had been so old,’ said Margaret after a pause of silence; and she turned away sighing.

‘Yes!’ said Mr. Bell.  ’It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious.  I take changes in all I see as a matter of course.  The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive.’

‘Let us go on to see little Susan,’ said Margaret, drawing her companion up a grassy road-way, leading under the shadow of a forest glade.

’With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little Susan may be.  But I have a kindness for all Susans, for simple Susan’s sake.’

’My little Susan was disappointed when I left without wishing her goodbye; and it has been on my conscience ever since, that I gave her pain which a little more exertion on my part might have prevented.  But it is a long way.  Are you sure you will not be tired?’

’Quite sure.  That is, if you don’t walk so fast.  You see, here there are no views that can give one an excuse for stopping to take breath.  You would think it romantic to be walking with a person “fat and scant o’ breath” if I were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.  Have compassion on my infirmities for his sake.’

’I will walk slower for your own sake.  I like you twenty times better than Hamlet.’