This was the end and purport of the ride
I learn’d, as walking slowly by their side
I heard their conversation....”
The “task” is forgotten in the pleasure or pathos of such incidents:
“In a stage coach, where late I chanc’d to be,
A little quiet girl my notice caught;
I saw she look’d at nothing by the way,
Her mind seem’d busy on some childish thought.
“I with an old man’s courtesy address’d
The child, and call’d her pretty dark-eyed maid