Life on a farm by the roar of the sea approaches the ideal upon earth. It isn't quite the ideal, because the ideal is always round the corner; but it is near it, and that is something to be thankful for. Mrs. Andrawartha ran the farm, and she had two tall, strapping sons and a daughter. Mrs. Andrawartha was what is called a "comfortable" woman; and "comfort" is the one virtue prized above rubies in these parts.

It was through accident that we struck the farm one afternoon, the fact being that the Bookworm was limping, having slightly sprained his ankle. There wasn't much to recommend us at first sight—three dusty wayfarers, with small knapsacks, and no warts or other indications of royal lineage upon either of us. The farmhouse was situated in an old-fashioned garden, and a good, roomy porch, with seats on either side, offered hospitality. Open windows were visible through luxuriant fuchsias and creepers, but what the walls were built of no one could tell, so completely covered were they with flowering plants. It was a sort of place which wanted to be looked at again and again, something fresh coming into view each time; and the oftener you looked at it the more you liked it.

The Bookworm rapped modestly with his knuckles upon the thick door, but no one came. We could hear voices, and an aromatic perfume filled the passage. The Bookworm tried again, and only hurt his knuckles. Then Guy said he'd negociate, and if he got into trouble we were there to help him. The smell of burning furze and brambles guided him to the great kitchen, and he winked again and coughed as the smoke from the wide open fireplace filled his eyes. There was a little maid heaping up the thorns and brambles, and somewhere in the blue haze he saw the supple outline of a young girl, with her arms bare. They were heating the brick oven for bread-baking. A very sweet voice floated through the film of blue, aromatic smoke. A sudden draught cleared the smoke, and Guy stood face to face with the owner of the voice; and a nice face it was, now radiant with the heat from the burning brambles. The bare arms were dimpled, and the whole figure was cased in a white wrapper, showing to perfection the clear skin, and brown hair, and light hazel eyes of the young girl. This was Miss Andrawartha.

Mrs. Andrawartha was in the "living-room" (and a nice room it was), overlooking much of the farm land, the sea beyond, and the great cliffs, rising sheer from the yellow sands, playing hide-and-seek between them. The lady was portly, and sat in a chair made for comfort before the open window, and Guy, ushered into the presence of such homely dignity, wished to stammer an excuse, and back out. Remembrance of the sprained foot alone restrained him.

"You can stop here as long as you've a mind to, if only you behave yourselves," said the lady in the chair.

"Three of us?" queried Guy.

"The house is big enough," said the lady.

Guy made a rush for the porch. "Come in, you beggars," said he; "there's a queen inside, and a divinity in the kitchen."

At the evening meal we were incorporated with the family. Mrs. Andrawartha, in her chair of comfort, presided, supported by her two tall sons, then us, then the farm servants, and the daughter of the house at the other end of the table.

Our presence made no difference to the social economy of the farm, except that Mrs. Andrawartha presided over a late breakfast in the living-room. This was quite a personal compliment, and never could woman look more "comfortable" than the widow Andrawartha at table.

"If this is farm life, I'm a convert for ever," said Guy, chipping an egg and catching the white cream in his spoon.

The bread, just perfumed with the aroma of the burning furze with which the clome oven was heated, was delicious by itself, but with the butter thick upon it, the palate rose to the occasion and was satisfied. The home-cured ham in front of the comfortable widow would take no denial, and must be tasted. The cream, with its sheen of gold, and the honey, winking wickedly at the cream, would not be put aside; so there was nothing for it but to mix them both in holy matrimony upon the perfumed bed of bread. There was such a blend of delicate flavours and sightly delicacies that our eyes would shut, so that nothing might interfere with the joys of taste. Only a few flowers were on the table, but through the open window floated the scents of the garden, and the bees hummed and waltzed, and there was room for all, and to spare, at the table of the comfortable widow.

"Great Scott!" said Guy. "I shall never forget. Such everything! Only the worst of it is, I shall never like anything again for evermore. Fancy shop eggs, and 'best Dosset,' and alumed bread, and stale ham after this feast of the gods, when they lived among men. There's one saint still in Cornwall—the saint of good things at the shrine of the comfortable widow."

We left the Bookworm to himself and the odd volumes of the Arminian Magazine, and suchlike food for such as he, and he seemed as pleased as Punch at the thought of being alone with anything musty, fusty, and out of date.

"Incurable," said Guy. "This reading habit sticks to a fellow of his sort, like dram-drinking to a tramp."

Guy was in the seventh heaven of delight when the daughter of the house told him that in an orchard, through which the brook ran to the sea, there were some trout. Her father used to bring home "a fine passul" sometimes, and his rod and lines were all in the house, for the boys never troubled the fish. So Guy went a-fishing, his heart full of content with his breakfast, and susceptible to the diviner impressions which the daughter of the house in blue print and white apron might make upon him. The boys called her "Phil," but her name was Phyllis; he had got so far as that, when the widow's voice awoke him from contemplation of eyes and hair, and all the points which young men like to study at chance meetings.

He found the brook, and then the orchard. The water was as bright as glass, and the sun-motes danced upon it between the shadows. Trout there were in the stream, but they had not tasted a worm for a month, except by chance, and the flies were not to their liking. Guy walked up stream to where the brook was fed by two trickling rills, where there was some depth of water, and an old, overhanging bank, and current enough for his fly to sail downward, temptingly, to the eyes of adventurous trout wanting to see life. At the deepest part the stream was shadowed by a large apple tree, and here Guy changed his flies, and cast deftly towards the spot where he felt sure the king of the stream must linger, if, indeed, it had a king. Presently, a melodious splash above his own fly told its secret, and Guy's hopes rose until he caught a little beauty, and then another, and another, and laid them on the grass, covering them with dock leaves with loving tenderness. Small fry that he would have been thankful for on other days he returned to the stream with words of advice.

Breakfast doesn't last for ever, and Guy began to feel peckish, but he wasn't going to give up yet, not he. He'd take home a fry of trout which would send an incense above the farm to the blue heavens, and make all invisible spirits envious. Presently he heard dry branches breaking under a light footstep, and the daughter of the farm stood by him, a ministering angel, with a pasty and a bottle of milk in a basket covered with a cloth of purest white. This was what she used to do for her father, who wouldn't leave off until he had a dish to his liking; and mother, thinking all men who fished for trout were the same, sent her with the basket of "croust" to keep off the pangs. So the dainty messenger. Then Guy uncovered his spoil, and Phyllis played him artlessly, so that he, in his turn, rose and bolted the sweet bait, and turned to go down stream again, only to know that he was in the toils, unless the fair angler should let him go.

She must go herself now, and Guy, who could not get away on his own account, felt grieved that release must come. It was sudden, but irresistible, and the thrilling exquisite. Then came the shock. "I am bespoke already, sir." The line parted.

Guy fished and fished until after sunset, but joy of capture was gone. He had himself been captured, and felt pity. Still he brought home a fine basket, and the comfortable widow served them up for breakfast, whole, and still beautiful.

The Bookworm, nursing his slight sprain, enjoyed himself in his own fashion, and, rummaging at the back of the open book-case, unearthed a book, bound in parchment, which commenced with farm accounts, and ended with "Receipts and Charms for the Cure of Man and Beastes." The pages were undated, but were written a hundred years ago by one Andrawartha, grandfather of the comfortable widow's husband. The document bore the following preface:—

"Lest I forget what has been told to me, I commit to paper charms and other devices for the cure of men and beastes. My forbears used these charms for more years than I can tell, and those who use them must have faith in them that they will work their work, or they labour in vain. And I pray God that I commit no sin in handing down what I have been taught, but that it may be counted merit in me to preserve what has been found out with much labour, and hath spared man and beast great and grievous sufferings in the flesh, and saved much money, when it could ill be spent, as, God wot, is the case on farms in this country.

Some of the receipts would offend moderns, but all were seemingly set down in good faith; and the Bookworm copied many, with permission.

"A tooth from a dead man's mouth carried in the pocket is an infallible charm against toothache."

"The eighth psalm read three times a day, three days running, cures the thrush."

"To keep away evil spirits from cattle, nail four horse-shoes in the form of a cross against the door."

"A church key applied to a wound stops bleeding."

"Bore a hole in a nutmeg and tie round your neck, and nibble nine mornings fasting, and boils will disappear in spring and autumn."

"Breathe over a newly made grave, and cure a cough."

"Take spoonful of earth from grave of newly interred virgin, dissolve in water, and drink fasting, to cure 'decline.'"

"Toad's liver fried is good for rheumatism, so also are adders' tails; the adders must be killed whilst dew is on them."

"The sign of the cross drawn on wood, stone, or metal, and bound over a wound, stops bleeding in man or beast."

For toothache was this formula: "Upon a rock St. Peter stood, towards Jerusalem. And Peter prayed, 'Lord, forgive me my sins, and I shall be free. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.—Amen.' Say three times a day, three days running, and drink powdered brimstone water between whiles."

To cure heartache: "Sleep with key of church door around your neck."

"Water taken from church font is good for children with rickets, and will straighten bow-legged children, and children with 'wobbles.'"

"Black spiders dried and powdered cure heart-burn." There were many other cures for heart-burn, and all of them nasty, so nasty that spider-powder sprinkled in water was dainty by comparison.

Meteorolites and curious stones when ground to powder will cure men or beasts of all common diseases, and blue snake-stones are infallible in case of snake-bite.

There were love philtres innumerable, and it appeared that a deserted maid had only to steal her lover's jacket, turn the sleeves inside out, bury it at midnight in a churchyard, and then, presto! the lover's heart would turn, and turn, as the jacket rotted in the ground, until he came back repentant to his ancient flame.

The Bookworm made notes of many other things which would do for the curious in such matters, and remarked as singular that, in all the book, there was no reference to saints or invocations to saints, which, he said, was very strange in the land of saints. Guy confessed that the matter was beyond him, and said he did not care if he never heard the word "saint" again. Saint this, and saint that, and saint the other—there was too much of it in one small county, to his taste.