"La," says she, "I can never forgive my husband for not having told me. To think you should honour us by sitting down in our humble farm-kitchen to our humble fare, and you should be treated so unseemly! But it is so like my husband not to have told me. La, will your lordship have ale, or does your lordship prefer to take a little claret-wine of a morning? We have it, although it is not on the table. Jenny, go this minute and fetch the claret-wine for his lordship."
It seemed that our hostess having got over the first shock of our identity, proposed to match our breeding with some of her own. She began to use a high clipping tone that she evidently kept for company, and became so assiduous in the attentions she paid us, and so heedful of our wants, that we profited vastly by her credulity, if that is the right name to apply to it. Her husband, however, was not so lightly to be imposed upon, as he was at pains to show. At every polite effort put forward by his wife, he counteracted it by a wink or a cough, or a chuckle, or a snigger. And he put the handles to our names in such a voice of banter as greatly distressed his wife, who continued to overpower us with her civilities. At last, says she:
"Your lordship and your ladyship must really excuse my husband. He is a very good honest man to be sure," here she sank her voice to a mysterious whisper, "but he is a little vulgar and low-bred in these things, although," with a still lower voice and more mystery, "I would not have him hear me say it for the world. You see he is not come of so good a family as I am. His folk were a little vulgar and low-bred too, and people said at the time that for all his farm and his prize heifers it was the last thing to be expected that a person like me would ever marry him. Ah, well, I suppose it is always a mistake to marry out of one's station, although to be sure no one could have a kinder, better husband. But your lordship and your ladyship follow me, do you not? He almost makes me blush for his manners, that he do."
"My dear madam," says I, "I am sure we both feel for you from the bottom of our hearts, and understand the occasion perfectly."
And could there have been a prettier comedy? First we had had the husband apologizing for the wife, and now we had the wife apologizing for the husband. Lord knows whether she allowed us to be what we were or not, but she certainly entertained us to a royal breakfast. Two famished people never sat down to a finer meal in this world than the one we partook of. And when we left our honest but wonderfully ill-assorted host and hostess, about nine of the clock in the morning to continue on our way, we were most handsomely fortified in mind and body.
As we passed from the farmyard and struck into the fields the sun was showing handsomely, and the thrushes were singing their lusty notes. It was as fine a spring morning as the heart could desire. The virginal airs played on our faces; the birds called to one another from hedge to tree; the little lambs frisked among the white daisies in the meads, as hand-in-hand we took our way again. We still had no clear idea as to whither we were going. But we were mightily content wherever our way might lead. The sense we had of our liberty was a something we had never tasted before. Had we not cast off the trammels of the world? We could begin life again; and be whom we chose. We were a pair of unknown persons, moving among unknown people in unknown places. Every hour we passed in these solitudes of nature had something of the glamour of romance invested in it. For we did not know how our next meal would be come by, or what would be the next shelter for our weary heads when nightfall overtook us. But we cared not. We were in the crisp, free, open air, snuffing the sunshine, and trampling across a carpet of flowers over hill and dale, while the spring birds sang.
I think we were too desperately happy to talk much. Cynthia was radiant, and as light of foot and heart as the birds that called to us from the green hedges. The words of an appropriate ballad were on her lips:
When Strephon wooed his Chloe dear,
All in the springtime of the year.
And I took the infection of her spirits also, I was sensible, ere we had walked a mile, of a frank, jovial, devil-may-care lightheartedness, not so fresh and buoyant as my little one's perhaps, since I had lived a little longer, had therefore had the brightness of my youth more overlaid with the rust of the world, and had a greater weight of responsibility, more particularly for her, upon my shoulders. It was little I felt it, however. For suddenly as we walked in these sweet fields, an idea was born in my mind that banished everything except the thrill of joy it brought.
"My prettiness," says I, "we could not wish for a perfecter wedding morning."