weather-beaten hat. She carried a stick in her gloveless hand. Her
conversation was quite new to me, and resembled very much what I would have
fancied the holiday recollections of a schoolboy; and the language in which
it was sustained was sometimes so outlandish, that I was forced to laugh
outright--a demonstration which she plainly did not like.

Her talk was about the great jumps she had made--how she snow-balled the
chaps' in winter--how she could slide twice the length of her stick beyond
'Briddles, the cow-boy.'

With this and similar conversation she entertained me.

The grounds were delightfully wild and neglected. But we had now passed
into a vast park beautifully varied with hollows and uplands, and such
glorious old timber massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among
these, we got at last into a picturesque dingle; the grey rocks peeped from
among the ferns and wild flowers, and the steps of soft sward along its
sides were dark in the shadows of silver-stemmed birch, and russet thorn,
and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Erl-king and his daughter
might glide on their aërial horses.

In the lap of this pleasant dell were the finest blackberry bushes, I
think, I ever saw, bearing fruit quite fabulous; and plucking these, and
chatting, we rambled on very pleasantly.

I had first thought of Milly's absurdities, to which, in description, I
cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance
of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so
indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with
suppressed laughter.