ot keep her bitterness towards her; especially when she
found that Lorna knew as much of books as need be.

As for John Fry, and Betty, and Molly, they were a perfect plague when
Lorna came into the kitchen. For betwixt their curiosity to see a
live Doone in the flesh (when certain not to eat them), and their high
respect for birth (with or without honesty), and their intense desire to
know all about Master John's sweetheart (dropped, as they said, from the
snow-clouds), and most of all their admiration of a beauty such as never
even their angels could have seen--betwixt and between all this, I say,
there was no getting the dinner cooked, with Lorna in the kitchen.

And the worst of it was that Lorna took the strangest of all strange
fancies for this very kitchen; and it was hard to keep her out of it.
Not that she had any special bent for cooking, as our Annie had; rather
indeed the contrary, for she liked to have her food ready cooked; but
that she loved the look of the place, and the cheerful fire burning, and
the racks of bacon to be seen, and the richness, and the homeliness, and
the pleasant smell of everything. And who knows but what she may have
liked (as the very best of maidens do) to be admired, now and then,
between the times of business?

Therefore if you wanted Lorna (as I was always sure to do, God knows
how many times a day), the very surest place to find her was our own
old kitchen. Not gossiping, I mean, nor loitering, neither seeking into
things, but seeming to be quite at home, as if she had known it from a
child, and seeming (to my eyes at least) to light it up, and make life
and colour out of all the dullness; as I have seen the breaking sun do
among brown shocks of wheat.

But any one who wished to learn whether girls can change or not, as the
things around them change (while yet their hearts are steadfast, and for
ever anchored), he should just have seen my Lorna, after a fortnight
of our life, and freedom from anxiety. It is possible that my
company--although I am accounted stupid by folk who do not know my
way--may have had something to do with it; but upon this I will not say
much, lest I lose my character. And indeed, as regards company, I had
all the threshing to see to, and more than half to do myself (though any
one would have thought that even John Fry must work hard this weather),
else I could not hope at all to get our corn into such compass that a
good gun might protect it.

But t