made more haste, we may be sure. 

 The lane I had been following had finally dropped me down at something of a run upon just such a scene. The cottage, built substantially of grey stone, stood upon the side of the slope, and a broad strip of garden, half cultivated and half wild, began near the house with cabbages, and ended in a jungle of giant bulrushes as it touched the stream. Golden patches of ragwort blazed here and there among a tangled mass of no doubt worthier herbage,—such even in nature is the power of gold,—and there were the usual birds. 

 However, my business is with the week's washing, which in various shades of white, with occasional patches of scarlet, fluttered fantastically across a space of the garden, thereby giving unmistakable witness to human inhabitants, male and female. 

 As I lounged upon the green bank, I lazily watched these parodies of humanity as they were tossed hither and thither with humourous indignity by the breeze, remarking to myself on the quaint shamelessness with which we thus expose to the public view garments which at other times we are at such bashful pains to conceal. And thus philosophising, like a much greater philosopher, upon clothes, I found myself involuntarily deducing the cottage family from the family washing. I soon decided that there must be at least one woman say of the age of fifty, one young woman, one little child, sex doubtful, and one man probably young. Further than this it was impossible to conjecture. Thus I made the rough guess that a young man and his wife, a child, and a mother-in-law were among the inhabitants of this idyllic cottage. 

 But the clothes-line presented charming evidence of still another occupant; and here, though so far easy to read, came in something of a puzzle. Who in this humble out-of-the-way cottage could afford to wear that exquisite cambric petticoat edged with a fine and very expensive lace? And surely it was on no country legs that those delicately clocked and open-worked silk stockings walked invisible through the world. 

 Nor was the lace any ordinary expensive English lace, such as any good shop can supply. Indeed, I recognised it as being of a Parisian design as yet little known in England; while on the tops of the stockings I laughingly suspected a border designed by a certain eccentric artist, who devotes his strange gifts to decorating with fascinating miniatures the under-world of woman. I have seen corsets thus made beautiful by him valued at five hundred pounds, and he never paints a pair of garters for 

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