I should think, is dirt, considering the
merry faces that go along with it. At any rate, cleanliness is sometimes
a painful good, as any one can vouch who has had his face washed the
wrong way, by a pitiless hand with a gold ring on the third finger. If
you, reader, have not known that initiatory anguish, it is idle to expect
that you will form any approximate conception of what Caterina endured
under Mrs. Sharp's new dispensation of soap-and-water. Happily, this
purgatory came presently to be associated in her tiny brain with a
passage straightway to a seat of bliss--the sofa in Lady Cheverel's
sitting-room, where there were toys to be broken, a ride was to be had on
Sir Christopher's knee, and a spaniel of resigned temper was prepared to
undergo small tortures without flinching.

Chapter 4

In three months from the time of Caterina's adoption--namely, in the late
autumn of 1773--the chimneys of Cheverel Manor were sending up unwonted
smoke, and the servants were awaiting in excitement the return of their
master and mistress after a two years' absence. Great was the
astonishment of Mrs. Bellamy, the housekeeper, when Mr. Warren lifted a
little black-eyed child out of the carriage, and great was Mrs. Sharp's
sense of superior information and experience, as she detailed Caterina's
history, interspersed with copious comments, to the rest of the upper
servants that evening, as they were taking a comfortable glass of grog
together in the housekeeper's room.

A pleasant room it was as any party need desire to muster in on a cold
November evening. The fireplace alone was a picture: a wide and deep
recess with a low brick altar in the middle, where great logs of dry wood
sent myriad sparks up the dark chimney-throat; and over the front of this
recess a large wooden entablature bearing this motto, finely carved in
old English letters, 'Fear God and honour the King'. And beyond the
party, who formed a half-moon with their chairs and well-furnished table
round this bright fireplace, what a space of chiaroscuro for the
imagination to revel in! Stretching across the far end of the room, what
an oak table, high enough surely for Homer's gods, standing on four
massive legs, bossed and bulging like sculptured urns! and, lining the
distant wall, what vast cupboards, suggestive of inexhaustible apricot
jam and promiscuous butler's perquisites! A stray picture or two had
found their way down there, and made agreeable patches o