with some neighbouring farmers by having the longest-wooled sheep amongst them; but the old lady had thought George would prefer the oldfashioned silver, without prejudice to showing off the new acquisition after tea, and to the relation of the whole story of the sweepstakes circumstantially by the old gentleman. He had never seen a woman in his life who seemed to know so much about sheep as his new daughter-in-law, or who handled his samples of wool in such a sensible and practical way.
On the following day, when Mr. Copeland took Jessie with her husband over the farmyard, the cattle-pens, and stable and poultry yard and piggeries, she expressed herself so intelligently about all these things that the old man's heart was completely won. Although George had gone a long way for his wife, and had as yet got nothing with her, he had certainly done better than if he had brought home a girl from any English town; and very few English farmers' daughters now-a-days were, as the old man said, so knowledgable about rural affairs as Mrs. George showed herself. The old gentleman was of opinion that the young women of the present generation were brought up altogether too fine for daily use. Even his own daughters had despised or disliked what their mother had been taught as indis-
