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Susan, on her part, continued to thread the narrow winding lanes that led towards Wantage; walking leisurely along, and forming as she went, half unconsciously, a nosegay of the wild flowers of the season; the delicate hare-bell, the lingering wood-vetch, the blue scabious, the heaths which clustered on the bank, the tall graceful lilac campanula, the snowy bells of the bindweed, the latest briar-rose, and that species of clematis, which, perhaps, because it generally indicates the neighbourhood of houses, has won for itself the pretty name of the traveller’s joy, whilst that loveliest of wild flowers, whose name is now sentimentalised out of prettiness, the intensely blue forget-me-not, was there in rich profusion.

Susan herself was not unlike her posy; sweet and delicate, and full of a certain pastoral grace. Her light and airy figure suited well with a fair mild countenance, breaking into blushes and smiles when she spoke, and set off by bright ringlets of golden hair, parted on her white forehead, and hanging in long curls on her finely-rounded cheeks. Always neat but never fine, gentle, cheerful, and modest, it would be difficult to find a prettier specimen of an English farmer’s daughter than Susan Howe. But just now the little damsel wore a look of care not usual to her fair and tranquil features; she seemed, as she was, full of trouble.

“Poor William!” so ran her thoughts, “my father would not even listen to his last letter because it poisoned him with musk. I wonder that William can like that disagreeable smell. I and he expects him to come down on the top of the coach, instead of which, he says that he means to purchase a–a–(even in her thoughts poor Susan could not master the word, and was obliged to have recourse to the musk-scented billet) britschka–ay, that’s it!–or a droschky; I wonder what sort of things they are–and that he only visits us en passant in a tour, for which, town being so empty, and business slack, his employer has given him leave, and in which he is to be accompanied by his friend Monsieur Victor–Victor–I can’t make out his other name–an eminent perfumer who lives next door. To think of bringing a Frenchman here, remembering how my father hates the whole nation! Oh dear, dear! And yet I know William. I know why he went, and I do believe, in spite of a little finery and foolishness, and of all the britschkas, and droschkies, and Victors, into the bargain, that he’ll be glad to get home again. No place like home! Even in these silly notes that feeling is always at the bottom. Did not I hear a carriage before me? Yes!–no!–I can’t tell. One takes every thing for the sound of wheels when one is expecting a dear friend!–And if we can but get him to look, as he used to look, and to be what he used to be, he won’t leave us again for all the fine shops in Regent Street, or all the britschkas and droschkies in Christendom. My father is getting old now, and William ought to stay at home,” thought the affectionate sister; “and I firmly believe that what he ought to do, he will do. Besides which–surely there is a carriage now.” Just as Susan arrived at this point of her cogitations, that sound which had haunted her imagination all the afternoon, the sound of wheels rapidly advancing, became more and more audible, and was suddenly succeeded by a tremendous crash, mixed with men’s voices–one of them her brother’s–venting in two languages (for Monsieur Victor, whatever might be his proficiency in English, had recourse in this emergency to his native tongue) the different ejaculations of anger and astonishment which are pretty sure to accompany an overset: and on turning a corner of the lane, Susan caught her first sight of the britschka or droschky, whichever it might be, that had so much puzzled her simple apprehension, in the shape of a heavy-looking open carriage garnished with head and apron, lying prostrate against a gate-post, of which the wheels had fallen foul. Her brother was fully occupied in disengaging the horses from the traces, in reprimanding his companion for his bad driving, which he declared had occasioned the accident, and in directing him to go for assistance to a cottage half a mile back on the road to Wantage, whilst he himself intimated his intention of proceeding for more help to the Farm; and the obedient Frenchman–who, notwithstanding the derangement which his coeffure might naturally be expected to have experienced in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair were put in paper every night and pomatumed every morning, and as if his whole dapper person were saturated with his own finest essences, a sort of travelling perfumer’s shop, a peripatetic pouncet-box–walked off in the direction indicated, with an air of habitual submission, which showed pretty plainly that, whether as proprietor of the unlucky britschka, or from his own force of character, William was considered as the principal director of the present expedition.