CHAPTER II.
MR. VERDANT GREEN DELIVERS MISS PATTY HONEYWOOD FROM THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA.
VEN if Mr. Verdant Green had not been filled with the peculiarly pleasurable sensations to which allusion has just been made, it is yet exceedingly probable that he would have found his visit to Honeywood Hall one of those agreeable and notable events which the memory of after-years invests with the couleur du rose.
In the first place—even if Miss Patty was left out of the question—every one was so particularly attentive to him, that all his wants, as regarded amusement and occupation, were promptly supplied, and not a minute was allowed to hang heavily upon his hands. And, in the second place, the country, and its people and customs, had so much freshness and peculiarity, that he could not stir abroad without meeting with novelty. New ideas were constantly received; and other sensations of a still more delightful nature were daily deepened. Thus the time passed pleasantly away at Honeywood Hall, and the hours chased each other with flying feet.
Mr. Honeywood was a squire, or laird; and though the prospect from the hall was far too extensive to allow of his being monarch of all that he surveyed, yet he was the proprietor of no inconsiderable portion. The small village of Honeybourn,—which brought its one wide street of long, low, lime-washed houses hard by the hall,—owned no other master than Mr. Honeywood; and all its inhabitants were, in one way or other, his labourers. They had their own blacksmith, shoemaker, tailor, and carpenter; they maintained a general shop of the tea-coffee-tobacco-and-snuff genus; and they lived as one family, entirely independent of any other village. In fact, the villages in that district were as
