Mrs. Fleming was failing in health.  On that plea, with the solemnity suited to the autumn of her allotted days, she persuaded her husband to advertise for an assistant, who would pay a small sum of money to learn sound farming, and hear arguments in favour of the Corn Laws.  To please her, he threw seven shillings away upon an advertisement, and laughed when the advertisement was answered, remarking that he doubted much whether good would come of dealings with strangers.  A young man, calling himself Robert Armstrong, underwent a presentation to the family.  He paid the stipulated sum, and was soon enrolled as one of them.  He was of a guardsman’s height and a cricketer’s suppleness, a drinker of water, and apparently the victim of a dislike of his species; for he spoke of the great night-lighted city with a horror that did not seem to be an estimable point in him, as judged by a pair of damsels for whom the mysterious metropolis flew with fiery fringes through dark space, in their dreams.

In other respects, the stranger was well thought of, as being handsome and sedate.  He talked fondly of one friend that he had, an officer in the army, which was considered pardonably vain.  He did not reach to the ideal of his sex which had been formed by the sisters; but Mrs. Fleming, trusting to her divination of his sex’s character, whispered a mother’s word about him to her husband a little while before her death.

It was her prayer to heaven that she might save a doctor’s bill.  She died, without lingering illness, in her own beloved month of June; the roses of her tending at the open window, and a soft breath floating up to her from the garden.  On the foregoing May-day, she had sat on the green that fronted the iron gateway, when Dahlia and Rhoda dressed the children of the village in garlands, and crowned the fairest little one queen of May:  a sight that revived in Mrs. Fleming’s recollection the time of her own eldest and fairest taking homage, shy in her white smock and light thick curls.  The gathering was large, and the day was of the old nature of May, before tyrannous Eastwinds had captured it and spoiled its consecration.  The mill-stream of the neighbouring mill ran blue among the broad green pastures; the air smelt of cream-bowls and wheaten loaves; the firs on the beacon-ridge, far southward, over Fenhurst and Helm villages, were transported nearer to see the show, and stood like friends anxious to renew acquaintance.  Dahlia and Rhoda taught the children to perceive how they resembled bent old beggar-men.  The two stone-pines in the miller’s grounds were likened by them to Adam and Eve turning away from the blaze of Paradise; and the saying of one receptive child, that they had nothing but hair on, made the illustration undying both to Dahlia and Rhoda.