CHAPTER XXXIX.
NOT AT HOME Mrs.Hockin, however, had not the pleasure promised her by the facetious Major of seeing me "make up to my grandmamma." For although we set off at once to catch the strange woman who had roused so much curiosity, and though, as we passed the door of Bruntlands, we saw her still at her post in the valley, like Major Hockin's new letter-box, for some reason best known to herself we could not see any more of her.

For, hurry as he might upon other occasions, nothing would make the Major cut a corner of his winding "drive" when descending it with a visitor.

He enjoyed every yard of its length, because it was his own at every step, and he counted his paces in an under-tone, to be sure of the length, for perhaps the thousandth time.

It was long enough in a straight line, one would have thought, but he was not the one who thought so; and therefore he had doubled it by judicious windings, as if for the purpose of breaking the descent.
"Three hundred and twenty-one," he said, as he came to a post, where he meant to have a lodge as soon as his wife would let him; "now the old woman stands fifty-five yards on, at a spot where I mean to have an ornamental bridge, because our fine saline element runs up there when the new moon is perigee.

My dear, I am a little out of breath, which affects my sight for the moment.