glasses, and uncorking the wine bottles. What a feast was spread before us on the white linen napkins on the grass!—rolls of bread and pats of butter, veal-and-ham pies, boiled eggs, nuts, pears, and a delectable salad compounded by his own hands, three bottles of wine, and I know not what else. It seemed enough for a company of twenty, yet not many basketfuls were left over when we had had our will with them. And all the time Morris kept our fancy on the wing with stories and curious lore, and droll comments on the comestibles he had laid before us. He took delight in gently teasing his daughter Jenny, ascribing imaginary sayings to her as the repository of the wisdom and foibles of her sex; and in speaking to me, or of me, as the fellow-countryman and friend of 'William Wallace wight,' John Knox, Rob Roy, or other Scottish celebrities, displaying, I confess, an acquaintance with incidents and characters in Scottish history and Walter Scott's novels well beyond my range.
Our lunch over, we were about to gather up the unbroken remainder of the feast, when Morris, noticing a group of children lingering near by and eyeing our proceedings enviously, invited them to the freedom of our table, an invitation which they accepted with manifest surprise and delight.
We then went up Richmond Hill. Morris had promised me that I should see from the Hill one of the most beautiful landscape views of its kind anywhere in England or elsewhere to be seen, and he observed me with quite boyish expectation as I looked round the beautiful sweep of the river and the wonderful curves of spreading meadow and woodland fading away into the luxurious haze of the afternoon. In a perverse way I affected to be quite unimpressed by the scene, and his disappointment was so evident that I immediately repented myself of my affectation and acknowledged the great beauty of it. We lolled for an hour or more on the bank of the hill, Morris and Radford recalling snatches of poetry relating to the country within
