E FIRST
TIME FEELS AS A GIRL

Chapter III

IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL

Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
her about the house.

To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
after her.

Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
threshold.

Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
saw.

Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.

Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
Miss Le Pettit--not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.

The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
sensibility, nur