ne. Even the stately
Elizabethan Hall with its high stone chimneys and mullioned bay
windows looked drowsy and half asleep. A pale wisp of smoke was
ascending listlessly in a straight line above the gabled roofs high up
into the far still air. Scarcely a sound came from the outbuildings
that lay beyond the Hall. Even the pigeons on the roof were too hot to
coo. In the herb garden beneath, the flowers drooped in the scorching
light. Glare everywhere. Only under the yew-trees was there to be
found a pool of grateful shadow. And even that pool had a sunshine of
its own radiating from the group of merry maidens, with their bright
faces and gay voices raised in perpetual talk, or laughter, or song.
For a little while they seemed to be busy practising a madrigal. Then
the irrepressible chatter burst out afresh. Cool and fragrant all the
maidens looked, in their dresses of clear sprigged muslin, each tied
at waist, wrists, and throat with ribbons of a different colour:
lilac, lavender, primrose, cherry, emerald, and blue. The garden roses
might droop in the hot garden outside, but the roses on the girls'
cheeks, instead of fading, flushed and deepened with growing
excitement. They all seemed full of suppressed eagerness, evidently
waiting for something much desired to happen.

At length tall Bridget, exclaiming, 'It must be time now!' sprang to
her feet, and, stooping under the clinging boughs of the yew-tree
temple, drew herself up to her full height outside its shade. Her gaze
roamed over the long grass of the orchard and down the broad path, to
the high stone arch of the entrance gate through which she could just
catch sight of a glimpse of dusty road.

'Nothing yet!' she reported, 'not even a sign of the black horses'
ears or heads above the hedge and not a sound upon the road.'

Margaret raised her head to listen. She inherited her mother's placid,
Madonna-like beauty, and was at this time the fairest of the whole
sisterhood. Sarah, who was hereafter to be considered not only the wit
but also the beauty of the family, was at this time a child of ten,
and not yet grown into her full inheritance of comeliness. In after
years it was said of Sarah that she was 'not only beautiful and lovely
to a high degree, but was wonderfully happy in ingeny and memory.'
But even at her loveliest it was never said of her, as it was of
Margaret, that she was 'glorious, comely, and beautiful in that which
never fades away,' 'lovely in the