“And well thou mayest, poor chick!” returned Barbara compassionately; adding in an undertone,—“Could she ne’er have come so far as Kirkham!”
They toiled wearily on after this, until presently Dick o’ Will’s—I drop the rest of the genealogy—drew bridle, and looking back, pointed with his whip to the village which now lay close before them.
“See thee!” said he. “Yon’s th’ fold.”
“Yon’s what?” demanded Barbara.
The word was unintelligible to her, as Dick pronounced it “fowd;” but had she understood it, she would have been little wiser. Fold meant to her a place to pen sheep in, while it signified to Dick an enclosure surrounded by houses.
“What is ’t?” responded Dick. “Why, it’s th’ fowd.”
“But what is ‘fowd’?” asked bewildered Barbara.
“Open thy een, wilt thou?” answered Dick cynically.
Barbara resigned the attempt to comprehend him, and, unwittingly obeying, looked at the landscape.
Just the village itself was pretty enough. It was surrounded with trees, through which white houses peeped out, clustered together on the bank of the little brook. The spire of the village church towered up through the foliage, close to the narrow footbridge; and beside it stood the parsonage,—a long, low, stone house, embowered in ivy.