The girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found cottagers and farmhouse servants to be.

Yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited but not adorned: she looked patient yet sad.

I lost sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with milk.

As she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence.

Uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head and bore it to the cottage himself.