As I was taking my daily walk to the post-office (an entirely unfruitful expedition thus far, as nobody has taken the pains to write to me) I saw a nursemaid coming out of the gate, wheeling a baby in a perambulator.

She was going placidly away from the Green when, far in the distance, she espied a man walking rapidly toward us, a heavy Gladstone bag in one hand.

She gazed fixedly for a moment, her eyes brightening and her cheeks flushing with pleasure,--whoever it was, it was an unexpected arrival;--then she retraced her steps and, running up the garden-path, opened the front door and held an excited colloquy with somebody; a slender somebody in a nice print gown and neatly-dressed hair, who came to the gate and peeped beyond the hedge several times, drawing back between peeps with smiles and heightened colour.

She did not run down the road, even when she had satisfied herself of the identity of the traveller; perhaps that would not have been good form in an English village, for there were houses on the opposite side of the way.

She waited until he opened the gate, the nursemaid took the bag and looked discreetly into the hedge, then the mistress slipped her hand through the traveller's arm and walked up the path as if she had nothing else in the world to wish for.