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ANYBODY may be lost in a wood. It is well for me to have so good an excuse for my wanderings! for I am rather famous for such misadventures, and have sometimes been accused by my kindest friends of committing intentional blunders, and going astray out of malice prepense. To be sure, when in two successive rambles I contrived to get mazed on Burghfield Common, and bewildered in Kibe's Lane, those exploits did seem to overpass the common limits of stupidity. But in a wood, and a strange wood, a new place, a fresh country, untrodden ground beneath the feet, unknown landmarks before the eyes, wiser folks than I might require the silken clue of Rosamond, or the bag of ashes given to Finette Cendron (Anglicè

Lost and Found. This selection and the next are from Miss Mitford's Our Village, first published as Essays in the London Magazine between 1824 and 1832. The village described in this popular work is Three Mile Cross, on the highway between Reading and Basingstoke.

Malice prepense. With a deliberately evil intention.
Mazed. Bewildered, as if lost in a maze.

Rosamond. Rosamond Clifford or Fair Rosamond, the mistress of Henry II., who lived in a labyrinth at Woodstock, near Oxford, Henry finding his way to her bower by means of a silken clue.

Finette Cendron. In this earlier version of the Cinderella story the three daughters are deserted by their parents, but the youngest is provided by her fairy godmother with a bag of

Cinderella) by the good fairy her godmother, to help them home again. Now, my luck exceeded even hers of the Glass Slipper, for I found something not unlike the good fairy herself, in the pleasant earthly guise of an old friend. But I may as well begin my story.

About two years ago we had the misfortune to lose one of the most useful and popular inhabitants of our village, Mrs. Bond, the butter-woman. She-for although there was a very honest and hard-working Farmer Bond, who had the honour to be Mrs. Bond's husband, she was so completely the personage of the family that nobody ever thought of him-she lived on a small dairy-farm at the other side of the parish, where she had reared ten children in comfort and respectability, contriving in all years and in all seasons to look and to be flourishing, happy, and contented, and to drive her tilted cart twice a week into B., laden with the richest butter, the freshest eggs, and the finest poultry of the county. Never was marketwoman so reliable as Mrs. Bond, so safe to deal with, or so pleasant to look at. She was a neat, comely woman of five-and-forty, or thereabout, with dark hair, laughing eyes, a bright smile, and a brighter complexion-red and white like a daisy. People used to say how pretty she must have been; but I think she was then in the prime of her good looks; just as

ashes, which serves as a clue to get them home again. Our modern version is based on Perrault's Cendrillon, and the glass slipper is due to a mistranslation or misreading of pantoufle en vair (a fur slipper) as pantoufle en verre.

a full-blown damask rose is more beautiful than the same flower in the bud.

Very pleasant she was to look at, and still pleasanter to talk to; she was so gentle, so cheerful, so respectful, and so kind. Everybody in the village loved Mrs. Bond. Even Lizzy and May, the two most aristocratical of its inhabitants, and the most tenacious of the distinctions of rank, would run to meet the buttercart as if it were a carriage and four; a mark of preference which the good-humoured dairy-woman did not fail to acknowledge and confirm by gifts suited to their respective tastes-an occasional pitcher of butter-milk to May, and a stick with cherries tied round it to poor Lizzy.

Nor was Mrs. Bond's bounty confined to largesses of so suspicious a nature, as presents to the pets of a good customer. I have never known any human being more thoroughly and universally generous, more delicate in her little gifts, or with so entire an absence of design or artifice in her attentions. It was a prodigality of kindness that seemed never weary of well-doing. What posies of pinks and sweet-williams, backed by marjoram and rosemary, she used to carry to the two poor old ladies who lodged at the pastrycook's at B.! What fagots of lilac and laburnum she would bring to deck the poor widow Hay's open

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Lizzie and May. Lizzie was a carpenter's daughter, the plaything and queen of the village, a child three years old. according to the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and self will. She has but one rival in her dominions, a certain white greyhound called Mayflower (May), much her friend."

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hearth! What baskets of water-cresses, the brownest, the bitterest, and the crispest of the year, for our fair neighbour, the nymph of the shoe-shop, a delicate girl, who could only be tempted in to her breakfast by that pleasant herb! What pots of honey for John Brown's cough! What gooseberries and currants for the baker's little children! And as soon as her great vine ripened, what grapes for everybody! No wonder that when Mrs. Bond left the parish to occupy a larger farm in a distant county, her absence was felt as a misfortune by the whole village; that poor Lizzy inquired after her every day for a week; and that May watched for the tilted cart every Wednesday and Friday for a month or more.

I myself joined very heartily in the general lamentation. But time and habit reconcile us to most privations, and I must confess that, much as I liked her, I had nearly forgotten our good butterwoman, until an adventure which befell me last week placed me once more in the way of her ready kindness.

I was on a visit at a considerable distance from home, in one of the most retired parts of Oxfordshire. Nothing could be more beautiful than the situation, or less accessible; shut in amongst woody hills, remote from great towns, with deep chalky roads, almost impassable, and a broad bridgeless river, coming, as if to intercept your steps, whenever you did seem to have fallen into a beaten track. It was exactly the country and the season in which to wander about all day long.

Tilted. Covered with a hood or tilt.

One fair morning I set out on my accustomed ramble. The sun was intensely hot; the sky almost cloudless; I had climbed a long abrupt ascent, to enjoy the sight of the magnificent river, winding like a snake amidst the richly-clothed hills; the pretty village, with its tapering spire; and the universal freshness and brilliancy of the gay and smiling prospect-too gay, perhaps! I gazed till I became dazzled with the glare of the sunshine, oppressed by the very brightness, and turned into a beech-wood by the side of the road, to seek relief from the overpowering radiance. These beech-woods should rather be called coppices. They are cut down occasionally, and consist of long flexible stems, growing out of the old roots. But they are like no other coppices, or rather none other can be compared with them. The young beechen stems, perfectly free from underwood, go arching and intertwining overhead, forming a thousand mazy paths, covered by a natural trellis; the shining green leaves, just bursting from their golden sheaths, contrasting with the smooth silvery bark, shedding a cool green light around, and casting a thousand dancing shadows on the mossy, flowery path, pleasant to the eye and to the tread, a fit haunt for wood-nymph or fairy. There is always much of interest in the mystery of a wood; the uncertainty produced by the confined boundary; the objects which crowd together and prevent the eye from penetrating to any distance; the strange flickering mixture of shadow and sunshine, the sudden flight of birds-oh, it was enchanting! I Coppice. A copse or thicket of brushwood.

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