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CHILDREN OF THE VILLAGE.

AMY LLOYD.

ONE fine sunshiny March morning, a lady, driving herself in a pony-carriage through Aberleigh lane, stopped beside a steep bank to look at a little girl and her dog in the adjoining field. The hedge had been closely cut, except where a tuft of hazel with its long tassels hung over some broom in full flower, and a straggling bush of the white-blossomed sloe was mixed with some branches of palms, from which the bees were already gathering honey. The little girl was almost as busy as the bees: she was gathering violets, white violets and blue, with which the sunny bank was covered; and her little dog was barking at a flock of sheep feeding in that part of the field, for it was a turnip field that was hurdled off for their use. The dog was a small French spaniel, one of the prettiest ever seen, with long curly hair, snow white, except that the ears and three or four spots on the body were yellow; large feathered feet, and bright black eyes: just the sort of dog of which fine ladies love to make pets.

It was curious to see this beautiful little creature, driving before it a great flock of sheep, ewes, lambs, and all-for sheep are sad cowards! And then, when driven to the hurdles, the sheep, cowards though they were, were forced to turn about; how they would take courage at sight of their enemy, advancing a step or two and pretending to look brave; then it was diverting to see how the little spaniel, frightened itself, would draw back barking towards its mistress, almost as sad a coward as the sheep. The lady sat watching their proceedings with great amusement, and at last addressed the little girl, a nice lass of ten years old in deep mourning. "Whose pretty little dog is that, my dear?" asked the lady.

"Mine, madam," was the answer. "And where did you get it? The breed is not common."

"It belonged to poor mamma. Poor papa brought it from France." And the look and the tone told at once that poor Amy was an orphan.

"And you and the pretty dog-what's its name?" said the lady, interrupting herself.

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Flossy, ma'am - dear Flossy!" And Amy stooped to stroke the curly, silky, glossy coat which had probably gained Flossy his appellation; and Flossy in return jumped on his young mistress, and danced about her with tenfold glee.

"You and Flossy live hereabout?" inquired the lady.

"Close by, ma'am; at Court farm, with my uncle and aunt Lloyd."

"And you love Flossy ?" resumed the lady; "You would not like to part with him?"

"Part with Floss!" cried Amy. "Part with my own Flossy!"-and she flung down her violets, and caught her faithful pet in her arms, as if fearful of its being snatched away; and Floss, as if partaking of the fear, nestled up to his young mistress, and pressed his head against her cheek.

"Do not be alarmed, my dear," replied the lady, preparing to drive on; "I am not going to steal your favourite, but I would give five guineas for a dog like him; and if ever you meet with such a one, you have only to send it to Lumley castle. I am Lady Lumley," added she. "Good morning, love! Farewell, Flossy!" And, with a kind nod, the lady and the pony-chaise passed rapidly by; and Amy and Flossy returned to Court farm.

Amy was an orphan, and had only lately come to live with her good uncle and aunt Lloyd, rough honest country people; and being a shy meek-spirited child, who had just lost her most affectionate parents, and had been used to soft voices and gentle manners, was so frightened at the loud speech of the farmer and the blunt ways of his wife, that she ran away from them as often as she could, and felt as forlorn and desolate as any little girl can do who has early learnt the blessed lesson of reliance on the Father of all. Her chief comfort at Court farm was to pet Flossy and to talk to old Dame Clewer, the charwoman, who had been her own mother's nurse.

Dame Clewer had known better days; but having married late in life, and been soon left a widow, she had toiled early and late to bring up an only son; and all her little earnings had gone to apprentice him to a carpenter and keep him decently clothed; and he, although rather lively and thoughtless, was a dutiful and grateful son, and being now just out of his time, had gone to the next town to try to get work, and hoped to repay his good mother all her care and kindness by supporting her out of his earnings. He had told his mother so when setting off the week before, and she had repeated it with tears in her eyes to Amytears of joy; and Amy on her return to the house, went immediately in search of her old friend, whom she knew to be washing there, partly to hear over again the story of Thomas Clewer's goodness, partly to tell her own adventure with Lady Lumley.

In the drying yard, as she expected, Amy found Dame Clewer; not however, as she expected, smiling and busy, and delighted to see Miss Amy, but sitting on the ground by the side of the clothes-basket, her head buried in her hands, and sobbing as if her heart would break. "What could be the matter? Why did she cry so?" asked Amy. And Dame Clewer, unable to resist the kind interest evinced by the affectionate child, told her briefly the cause of her distress-"Thomas had enlisted!" How few words may convey a great sorrow!-"Thomas was gone for a

soldier!"-And the poor mother flung herself her caresses. For full five minutes she sat

at her length on the ground, and gasped and sobbed as though she would never speak again.

"Gone for a soldier!" exclaimed Amy "Left you! Oh, he never can be so cruel, so wicked! He'll come back, dear nurse!" (for Amy always called Dame Clewer nurse, as her mother had been used to do.) He'll be sure to come back! Thomas is such a good son, with all his wildness. He'll come back -I know he will."

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"He can't!" replied poor nurse, trying to ronse herself from her misery. "He can't come, how much so ever he may wish it; they'll not let him. Nothing can get him off but money, and I have none to give." And again the mother's tears choked her words. My poor boy must go!"

Money!" said Amy, "I have half a crown, that godmamma gave me, and two shillings and three sixpences; I'll go and fetch them in a moment.'

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without speaking; at last she went to Dame Clewer, and gave the dog into her arms.

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Lady Lumley offered me five guineas for Flossy this morning," said she; "take him, dear nurse, and take the money; but beg her to be kind to him," continued poor Amy, no longer able to restrain her tears—“ beg her to be very kind to my Floss!" And, with a heart too full even to listen to the thanks and blessings which the happy mother was showering upon her head, the little girl turned away.

But did Lady Lumley buy Flossy? And was Thomas Clewer discharged? Yes, Thomas was discharged, for Sir John Lumley spoke to his colonel; and he returned to his home and his fond mother, quite cured of his wildness and his fancy for being a soldier. But Lady Lumley did not buy Floss, because, as she said, however she might like him, she never could bear to deprive so good a girl as Amy of any thing that gave her pleasure. She would not buy Floss, but she continued to take great notice both of him and his little mistress, had them often at the castle, always made Amy a Christmas present, and talks of taking her for her own maid when she grows up.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

"Blessings on your dear heart!" sobbed Dame Clewer; "your little money would be 'of no use. The soldier who came to tell me, offered to get him off for five pounds: but where am I to get five pounds? All my goods and all my clothes would not raise near such a sum: and even if any body was willing to lend money to a poor old creature like me, how should I ever be able to pay it? No! Thomas must go-go to the East Indies, as the soldier said, to be killed by the sword or THE COBBLER OVER THE WAY. to die of the fever!-I shall never see his dear face again! Never!" And turning resolutely ONE of the noisiest inhabitants of the small from the pitying child, she bent over the irregular town of Cranley, in which I had clothes in the basket, trying to unfold them the honour to be born, was a certain cobbler, with her trembling hands and to hang them by name Jacob Giles. He lived exactly overout to dry; but, unable in her agony to sepa- right our house, in a little appendage to the rate the wet linen, she burst into a passion of baker's shop,-an excrescence from that goodtears, and stood leaning against the clothes'-ly tenement, which, when the door was closed line, which quivered and vibrated at every sob, as if sensible of the poor mother's misery. Amy on her part, sat on the steps leading to the house, watching her in silent pity. "Oh, if mamma were alive!" thought the little girl -"or papa! or if I dared ask aunt Lloyd! or if I had the money of my own; or any thing that would fetch the money!" And just as she was thinking this very thought, Floss, wondering to see his little mistress so still and sad, crept up to her, and put his paw in her lap and whined. Dear Floss!" said Amy unconsciously, and then suddenly remembering what Lady Lumley had said to her, she took the dog up in her arms, and coloured like scarlet, from a mingled emotion of pleasure and pain; for Flossy had been her own mamma's dog, and Amy loved him dearly. For full five minutes she sat hugging Flossy and kissing his sleek shining head, whilst the faithful creature licked her cheeks and her hands, and nestled up to her bosom, and strove all he could to prove his gratitude, and return truly the word is worth borrowing.

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(for the tiny square window at its side was all but invisible), might, from its shape and its dimensions, be mistaken for an oven or a pigsty, ad libitum. By day, when the half-hatch was open, and the cobbler discovered at work within, his dwelling seemed constructed purposely to hold his figure; as nicely adapted to its size and motions, as the little toy called a weather-house is to the height and functions of the puppets who inhabit it;-only that Jacob Giles's stall was less accommodating than the weather-house, inasmuch as by no chance could his apartment have been made to contain two inmates in any position whatsoever.

At that half-hatch might Jacob Giles be seen stitching and stitching, with the peculiar regular two-handed jerk proper to the art of cobbling, from six in the morning to six at night, -deducting always certain mornings and afternoons and whole days given, when

*Townlet old Leland would have called it, and

to the alehouse may account for his descent from the shop to the stall) in the neighbouring borough of D., a place noted for the frequency and virulence of its contested elections. There was no event of his life on which our cobbler piqued himself so much as on having, as he affirmed, assisted in "saving his country," by forming one of the glorious majority of seven, by which a Mr. Brown, of those days, a silent, stupid, respectable country gentleman, a dead vote on one side of the house, ousted a certain Mr. Smith, also a country gentleman, equally silent, stupid, and

ever his purse or his credit would permit, to the ensnaring seductions of the tap-room at the King's Head. At all other seasons at the half-hatch he might be seen, looking so exactly like a Dutch picture, that I, simple child that I was, took a fine Teniers in my father's possession for a likeness of him. There he satwith a dirty red night-cap over his grizzled hair, a dingy waistcoat, an old blue coat, darned, patched, and ragged, a greasy leather apron, a pair of crimson plush inexpressibles, worsted stockings of all the colours known in hosiery, and shoes that illustrated the old saying of the shoemaker's wife, by wanting mend-respectable, and a dead vote on the other side. ing more than any shoes in the parish.

Which parties in the state these two worthy senators espoused, it was somewhat difficult to gather from the zealous champion of the victorious hero. Local politics have commonly very little to do with any general question: the blues or the yellows, the greens or the reds-colours, not principles, predominate at an election,-which, in this respect, as well as in the ardour of the contest, and the quantity of money risked on the event, bears no small resemblance to a horse-race.

The face belonging to this costume was rough and weather-beaten, deeply lined and deeply tinted, of a right copper-colour, with a nose that would have done honour to Bardolph, and a certain indescribable half-tipsy look, even when sober. Nevertheless, the face, ugly and tipsy as it was, had its merits. There was humour in the wink and in the nod, and in the knowing roll with which he transferred the quid of tobacco, his constant recreation and solace, from one cheek to the Whatever might have been the party of his other; there was good-humour in the half- favourite candidate, Jacob himself was a Tory shut eye, the pursed-up mouth, and the whole of the very first water. His residence at jolly visage; and in the countless variety of Cranley was during the later days of the strange songs and ballads which from morn- French revolution, when Loyalty and Repubing to night he poured forth from that half-licanism, Pittite and Foxite divided the land. hatch, there was a happy mixture of both. Jacob Giles was a Tory, a Pittite, a ChurchThere he sat, in that small den, looking some-and-King, and Life-and-Fortune man- the thing like a thrush in a goldfinch's cage, and singing with as much power, and far wider range, albeit his notes were hardly so melodious:-Jobson's songs in the Devil to Pay," and

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A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall,

loudest of the loyal; held Buonaparte for an incarnation of the evil spirit, and established an Anti-Gallican club at the King's Head, where he got tipsy every Saturday night for the good of the nation. Nothing could exceed the warmth of Jacob's loyalty. He even

Which served him for parlour, for kitchen, and hall," wanted to join the Cranley volunteers, quotbeing his favourites.

ing to the drill-serjeant, who quietly pointed to the crutch and the shoulder, the notable The half-hatch was, however, incomparably examples of Captain Green who halted, and the best place in which to see him, for his Lieutenant Jones who was awry, as prece face, with all its grotesqueness, was infinitely dents for his own eligibility. The hump and pleasanter to look at than his figure, one of the limp united were, however, too much to his legs being shorter than the other, which be endured. The man of scarlet declared that obliged him to use a crutch, and the use of there was no such piece of deformity in the the crutch having occasioned a protuberance whole awkward squad, and Jacob was deof the shoulder, which very nearly invested clared inadmissible; - a personal slight (to him with the dignity of a hump. Little cared say nothing of his being debarred the privi he for his lameness! He swung along mer-lege of shedding his blood in defence of the rily and rapidly, especially when his steps tended to the alehouse, where he was a man of prime importance, not merely in right of his good songs and his good-fellowship, but in graver moments, as a scholar, and a politician, being the best reader of a newspaper, and the most sagacious commentator on a debate, of any man who frequented the tap, the parish clerk himself not excepted.

Jacob Giles had, as he said, some right to talk about the welfare of old England, having, at one time of his life, been a householder, shopkeeper, and elector (N. B. his visits

king and constitution) which our cobbler found so hard to bear, that with the least encouragement in the world from the Opposition of Cranley, he would have ratted. One word of sympathy would have carried Mr. Giles, and his songs and his tipsiness to the "Russel-and-Sidney Club" (Jacobins Jacob used to call them), at the Greyhound; but the Jacobins laughed, and lost their proselyte; the Anti-Gallicans retained Jacob,-and Jacob retained his consistency.

How my friend the cobbler came to be the oretically so violent an Anti-jacobin, is best

known to himself. For certain he was in entertaining; my mother in his benevolence; practice far more of what would in these days and I in his fun. He used to mimic Punch be called a radical; was constantly infringing for my amusement; and I once greatly affrontthe laws which he esteemed so perfect, and ed the real Punch, by preferring the cobbler's bringing into contempt the authorities for performance of the closing scenes. Jacob was which he professed such enthusiastic venera- a general favourite in our family; and one tion. Drunk or sober, in his own quarrels, member of it was no small favourite of Jaor in the quarrels of others, he waged a per- cob's: that person was neither more nor less petual war with justice; hath been seen to than my nursery-maid, Nancy Dawson. snap his finger at an order of sessions, the said order having for object the removal of a certain barrel-organ man, "his ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;" and got into a demele with the church in the person of the old sexton, whom he nearly knocked down with the wind of his crutch (N. B. Jacob took care not to touch the old man) for driving away his clients, the boys who were playing at marbles on the tomb-stones. Besides these skirmishes, he was in a state of constant hostility with the officials called constables; and had not his reputation, good or bad, stood him in stead, his Saturday-night's exploits would have brought him acquainted with half the roundhouses, bridewells, stocks, and whipping-posts in the county. His demerits brought him off. "It's only that merry rogue, Jacob!" said the lenient: "only that sad dog, the cobbler!" cried the severe and between these contrary epithets, which in Master Giles's case bore so exactly the same meaning, the poor cobbler escaped.

In good truth it would have been a pity if Jacob's hebdomadal deviations from the straight path had brought him into any serious scrape, for, tipsy or sober, a better-natured creature never lived. Poor as he was, he had always something for those poorer than himself; would share his scanty dinner with a starving beggar, and his last quid of tobacco with a crippled sailor. The children came to him for nuts and apples, for comical stories and droll songs; the very curs of the street knew that they had a friend in the poor cobbler. He even gave away his labour and his time. Many a shoe hath he heeled with a certainty that the wretched pauper could not pay him; and many a job, extra-official, hath he turned his hand to, with no expectation of fee or reward. The "Cobbler over the way" was the constant resource of every body in want of a help, and whatever the station or circumstances of the person needing him, his services might be depended on to the best of his power.

For my own part, I can recollect Jacob Giles as long as I can recollect any thing. He made the shoes for my first doll-(pink I remember they were)-a doll called Sophy, who had the misfortune to break her neck by a fall from the nursery window; Jacob Giles made her pink slippers, and mended all the shoes of the family, with whom he was a universal favourite. My father delighted in his statesmanship, which must have been very

Nancy Dawson was the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood, a lively, clever girl, more like a French soubrette than an English maid-servant, gentille and espiègle; not a regular beauty,-hardly perhaps pretty; but with bright laughing eyes, a ready smile, a pleasant speech, and altogether as dangerous a person for an opposite neighbour as an old bachelor could desire. Jacob became seriously enamoured; wasted half his mornings in watching our windows, for my nursery looked out upon the street; and limped after us every afternoon when she took me (a small damsel of three years old, or thereabout) out walking. He even left off his tobacco, his worsted night-cap, his tipsiness, and his Saturday-night's club; got a whole coat to his back, set a patch on his shoe, and talked of taking a shop and settling in life. This, however, was nothing wonderful. Nancy's charms might have fired a colder heart than beat in the bosom of Jacob Giles. But that Nancy should "abase her eyes" on him: there was the marvel. Nancy! who had refused Peter Green the grocer, and John Keep the butcher, and Sir Henry's smart gamekeeper, and our own tall footman! Nancy to think of a tippling cripple like the cobbler over the way, that was something to wonder at!

Nancy, when challenged on the subject, neither denied nor assented to the accusation. She answered very demurely that her young lady liked Mr. Giles, that he made the child laugh, and was handy with her, and was a careful person to leave her with if she had to go on an errand for her mistress or the housekeeper. So Jacob continued our walking footman.

Our walks were all in one direction. About a mile south of Cranley was a large and beautiful coppice, at one corner of which stood the cottage of the woodman, a fine young man, William Cotton by name, whose sister Mary was employed by my mother as a sempstress. The wood, the cottage, and the cottage garden, were separated by a thick hedge and wide ditch from a wild broken common covered with sheep-a common full of turfy knolls and thymy banks, where the heathflower and the harebell blew profusely, and where the sun poured forth a flood of glory on the golden-blossomed broom. To one corner of this common,-a sunny nook covered with little turfy hillocks, originally, I suppose, formed by the moles, but which I used to call

Cock-Robins' graves,-Nancy generally led; and there she would frequently, almost constantly, leave me under Jacob's protection whilst she jumped over a stile inaccessible to my little feet, sometimes to take a message to Mary Cotton, sometimes to get me flowers from the wood, sometimes for blackberries, sometimes for nuts,-but always on some ostensible and well-sounding errand.

Nancy's absences, however, became longer and longer; and one evening Jacob and I grew mutually fidgety. He had told his drollest stories, made his most comical faces, and played Punch twice over to divert me; but I was tired and cross; it was getting late in the autumn; the weather was cold; the sun had gone down; and I began to cry amain for home and for papa. Jacob, much distressed by my plight, partly to satisfy me, and partly to allay his own irritability, deposited me in the warmest nook he could find, and scrambled over the stile in search of Nancy. Voices in the wood-her voice and William's guided him to the spot where she and the young forester sate side by side at the foot of an oak tree; and, unseen by the happy couple, the poor cobbler overheard the following dialogue. "On Saturday then, Nancy, I may give in the banns. You are sure that your mistress will let your sister take your place till she is suited ?"

"Quite sure," rejoined Nancy; "she is so kind."

"And on Monday fortnight the wedding is to be. Remember, not an hour later than eight o'clock on Monday fortnight. Consider how long I have waited-almost half a year." "Well!" said Nancy, "at eight o'clock on Monday fortnight."

"And the cobbler!" cried William; "that excellent under-nurse, who is waiting so contentedly on our little lady at the other side of the hedge"

"Ah, the poor cobbler!" interrupted Nancy. "We'll ask him to the wedding-dinner," added William.

"Yes; the poor cobbler!" continued the saucy maiden; "my old lover, the Cobbler over the way,' we 'll certainly ask him to the wedding-dinner. It will comfort him."

And to the wedding-dinner the cobbler went; and he was comforted:-he kissed the pretty bride; he shook hands with the handsome bridegroom, resumed his red cap and his tobacco, got tipsy to his heart's content, and reeled home singing 'God save the king,' right happy to find himself still a bachelor.

PATTY'S NEW HAT. WANDERING about the meadows one morning last May, absorbed in the pastoral beauty of the season and the scenery, I was overtaken

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by a heavy shower just as I passed old Mrs. Matthews's great farm-house, and forced to run for shelter to her hospitable porch. A pleasant shelter in good truth I found there. The green pastures dotted with fine old trees stretching all around; the clear brook winding about them turning and returning on its course, as if loath to depart; the rude cart-track leading through the ford; the neater pathway with its foot-bridge; the village spire rising amongst a cluster of cottages, all but the roofs and chimneys concealed by a grove of oaks; the woody back-ground, and the blue hills in the distance, all so flowery and bowery in the pleasant month of May; the nightingales singing; the bells ringing; and the porch itself, around which a honeysuckle in full bloom was wreathing its sweet flowers, giving out such an odour in the rain, as in dry weather nothing but the twilight will bring forth sphere of fragrance. The whole porch was alive and musical with bees, who, happy rogues, instead of being routed by the wet, only folded their wings the closer, and dived the deeper into the honey-tubes, enjoying, as it seemed, so good an excuse for creeping still farther within their flowery lodgment. It is hard to say which enjoyed the sweet breath of the shower and the honeysuckle most, the bees or I; but the rain began to drive so fast, that at the end of five minutes I was not sorry to be discovered by a little girl belonging to the family; and, first, ushered into the spacious kitchen, with its heavy oak table, its curtained chimney-corner, its bacon-rack loaded with enormous flitches, and its ample dresser, glittering with crockery-ware; and, finally, conducted by Mrs. Matthews herself into her own comfortable parlour, and snugly settled there with herself and her eldest grand-daughter, a woman grown; whilst the younger sister, a smiling light-footed lass of eleven or thereabouts, tripped off to find a boy to convey a message to my family, requesting them to send for me, the rain being now too decided to admit of any prospect of my walking home.

The sort of bustle which my reception had. caused having subsided, I found great amusement in watching my hospitable hostess, and listening to a dialogue, if so it may be called, between her pretty grand-daughter and herself, which at once let me into a little love-secret, and gave me an opportunity of observing one, of whose occasional oddities I had all my life heard a great deal.

Mrs. Matthews was one of the most remarkable persons in these parts; a capital farmer, a most intelligent parish officer, and in her domestic government, not a little resembling one of the finest sketches which Mr. Crabbe's graphical pen ever produced.

"Next died the widow Goe, an active dame
Famed ten miles round and worthy all her fame:
She lost her husband when their loves were young,
But kept her farm, her credit, and her tongue:

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