The very first time that the baby went out the monthly nurse carried her to see Mrs. Birkin; and as she marched with slow and stately tread up the narrow garden path to the cottage, a swarm of bees settled all over both infant and nurse. Fortunately the nurse was a Cotswold woman, and knew full well that if a swarm of bees settles upon an infant during the first month of its existence, and departs without stinging, it is a very lucky omen. And people born in other parts of the world will agree as to the good fortune of the latter contingency.

Mrs. Birkin in her porch, and the nurse in her cloak of bees, stood like two statues in the hot sunshine of that September afternoon, the nurse hardly daring to breathe, lest by some inadvertent movement she should change so stupendous a piece of luck into disaster.

Presently the brown cloud lifted itself from the white bundle in the anxious nurse's arms and passed with its own triumphant music to some other place.

The baby still slept sweetly, oblivious alike of good or evil fortune. Mrs. Birkin, her ruddy cheeks pale under the weather-stains of years, came forth from her cottage as the nurse tottered to meet her, holding out the baby and exclaiming hysterically: 'Take her, take her, and let me sit down somewhere, for my legs won't bear me no longer!'

"The Lard be praised!" cried Mrs. Birkin, seizing the baby. "That there lamb 'll be lucky an' good-lookin', an' she'll 'ave a good 'usban' for sure. Bless 'er! Them bees knows what they be about, an' 'tis plain they knew as you was Cotsal barn an' bred, an' wasn't none of them faintin', scritchin' women as don't rekkerni'ze the Lard's voice, not when 'E 'ollers in their yer."

Then, seated on the little wooden seats on each side of the tiny porch, the women proceeded to sing the size and the exceeding beauty of the new baby, who seemingly preferred the soothing lullaby of the bees, for she woke up and "hollered" with surprising vigour.

A little later the baby paid her visits to Mrs. Birkin in a fine, white perambulator, and, as that worthy woman put it, "You didn't know where you was" before that remarkable infant toddled up the cobbled path to the cottage quite unassisted.

Time slips by noiseless and fleet-footed in a quiet Cotswold village, even as in noisier and more strenuous places, and "Squoire's little darter" grew into "our young lady." To be sure, there were other young ladies in the neighbourhood, for the village is large and cheery, with many nice places around; but the other young ladies were in no way remarkable. No swarm of bees had settled on any of them in infancy. For it really seemed as if some of the sturdy sweetness of the bees had passed into the baby they thus honoured. As was said of jolly Dick Steele, "she was liked in all company because she liked it."

And now the village was upside down with excitement, for our young lady was going to be married, and Mrs. Birkin was to have a new bonnet for the great occasion.

Mrs. Birkin felt that she had an unusually important part to play in the festivities attendant on this great event, for our young lady's father, who had an excellent memory for dates, had decreed that the wedding-day should be on the anniversary of the day on which, nineteen years before, the swarm of bees had distinguished his daughter. Such a thing had never happened since, though plenty of babies had come both to Mrs. Birkin's village and the other villages round about, and you may be sure that Mrs. Birkin knew all about every baby that arrived within a ten-mile radius. She is an authority upon babies. She is one of those women who is everybody's mother because she has no living children of her own. In the churchyard, under the green mound that now marks the humble resting-place of Mr. Birkin, there were once two tiny graves, where, side by side, lay Mrs. Birkin's twin sons. And for the sake of those two babies, dead these forty years, Mrs. Birkin's heart had kept young and kind, and full of love for all other babies. So that it came about that the very crossest infant ever born into a world it seemed to find singularly unattractive was good with Mrs. Birkin, and in consequence she was in great request with busy mothers.

Nor was it only the babies who loved Mrs. Birkin. Little girls brought their dolls for her to dress, and little boys, even bad little boys, whose grubby hands were against every other man, woman, or child in the village, refrained from pillaging Mrs. Birkin's garden, and had been known to weed it for her, all for love.

For months past, in fact, ever since our young lady's engagement was announced, Mrs. Birkin had pondered the great question of the Bonnet. She had not had a new bonnet for six years. Four years before that, again, she had indulged in a widow's bonnet, in which, on Sundays, she did honour to the memory of the departed Birkin; until the crape grew green with age, and our young lady herself suggested that the time had come when Mrs. Birkin's somewhat mitigated woe might find expression in head-gear less indicative of intense gloom.

In our village, except of "a Sunday," the question of costume is extremely simple. The men wear corduroy; the women, lilac or pink print, with sunbonnet to match. There are those who wish that the wearing of these uniforms extended to Sundays,—the villagers, in the week, are so much more in harmony with the beautiful, grey, old houses,—but those who, like "Squoire," love these people well, would not for the world debar them from the wearing of that finery dear to the heart of woman in cottage and castle alike.

Squoire drives a coach, and often on Saturday afternoons he will pull up in the very middle of our one street and shout, "Any one for the town?" And sure enough, three or four eager damsels and matrons bustle out of their cottages, are packed in as inside passengers, and away goes the coach to distant "Ziren," where country folk can see the shops and make their purchases, Squoire bringing them and their bundles home in the evening again, and never a penny to pay for carriage hire.

Three times lately had Mrs. Birkin made this journey to "Ziren," rightly so called from its many fascinations. She had flattened her nose against the plate-glass windows of that stately shop in the market-place where there were displayed hats of the most bewitching beauty, and fabrics so delicate that Mrs. Birkin fairly caught her breath at the mere idea of any one daring to wear them. It was undoubtedly an entrancing vision, that shop; but then nothing was priced, and there were no bonnets in that window, and for a bonnet Mrs. Birkin had come to look.

At the corner of Black Jack Street, not quite in the market-place, but facing it, was another shop. Here there were hats and bonnets in plenty, marked in plain figures for all to see, and there was one, manifestly a bonnet "suitable for a elderly person," that positively fascinated Mrs. Birkin. Of white straw was it, trimmed with scarlet geraniums and elegant excrescences of watered ribbon of a delicate mauve shade—a truly bridal bonnet, fitted to grace even the marriage of our young lady herself. But its cost was twelve and sixpence, a truly prohibitive price for Mrs. Birkin—"A'most a month's keep," she sadly whispered to herself. She went away from that window. She walked right round the market-place, she looked into every milliner's window, she gazed upon other bonnets; but there was nothing to compare with the creation compounded of scarlet geraniums and mauve ribbon in the shop in Black Jack Street. All the same, Mrs.