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 exultation! Millicent’s heart laughed within her, and her lips would have laughed aloud, but that something held them silent, as it seemed to hold everything else. Absolute as the glory was the hush.

Not for very long, though. Before she had taken twenty steps along the road, “Get on, you beast! get on!” cried a passionate voice behind her. Startled, she paused beside a paddock-gate, and turned. A little way back, opposite the house, the slip-rails of another paddock were down, and, coming slowly over them, one by one, was a small and very straggling procession of cows, some ten in all. At their heels, bareback upon a bony horse, rode an uncouth stripling. His dress was composed of a blue-striped shirt, very muddy, tucked into tweed trousers, and his bare feet had been thrust into unlaced boots of an amazing thickness of leather, supporting a still thicker deposit of dirt. A shining jewel this object could scarcely be said to resemble, or anything else possessed of the smallest polish. His shouting ceased, however, the moment he caught sight of Millicent.

One by one, and certainly with exasperating slowness, the cows filed over the rails, crossed the road, and came hesitatingly up to the gate by which Millicent had paused—an open gate, that led into a bit of uphill pasture with a grey cow-shed atop. They looked reproachfully at the human obstacle in their path, but, finding that it did not move, obeyed the mitigated adjurations of their driver, and proceeded slowly, and each one with a nervous fling of the head as it passed, through the gate, and up towards the bails.