The farmer's expression as he looked at me was almost lover- like, and when he pressed a bit of paper into my hand I was sure it must be an offer of marriage.

It was in fact only a circular describing the Banner Bone Breaker.

It closed with an appeal to Buff Orpington breeders to raise and ever raise the standard, bidding them remember, in the midst of a low-minded and sordid civilisation, that the rose comb should be small and neat, firmly set on, with good working, a nice spike at the back lying well down to head, and never, under any circumstances, never sticking up.

This adjuration somewhat alarmed us as Phoebe and I had been giving our Buff Orpington cockerel the most drastic remedies for his languid and prostrate comb.
{Coming home: p85.jpg} Coming home we alighted from the trap to gather hogweed for the rabbits.
I sat by the wayside lazily and let Phoebe gather the appetising weed, which grows along the thorniest hedges in close proximity to nettles and thistles.
Workmen were trudging along with their luncheon-baskets of woven bulrushes slung over their shoulders.

Fields of ripening grain lay on either hand, the sun shining on their every shade of green and yellow, bronze and orange, while the breeze stirred the bearded barley into a rippling golden sea.
Phoebe asked me if the people I had left behind at the Hydropathic were my relatives.
"Some of them are of remote consanguinity," I responded evasively, and the next question was hushed upon her awe-stricken tongue, as I intended.
"They are obeying my wish to be let alone, there's no doubt of that," I was thinking.