f the high spirits, the clear eye, the
springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them
all; Hetty, glorious to look upon.

All the six were handsome. Here they are in their order: Emilia,
aged thirty-three (it was she who held the book); Molly,
twenty-eight; Hetty, twenty-seven; Nancy, twenty-two, lusty,
fresh-complexioned, and the least bit stupid; Patty, nearing
eighteen, dark-skinned and serious, the one of the Wesleys who could
never be persuaded to see a joke; and Kezzy, a lean child of fifteen,
who had outgrown her strength. By baptism, Molly was Mary; Hetty,
Mehetabel; Nancy, Anne; Patty, Martha; and Kezzy, Kezia. But the
register recording most of these names had perished at Epworth in the
Parsonage fire, so let us keep the familiar ones. Grown women and
girls, all the six were handsome. They had an air of resting there
aloof; with a little fancy you might have taken them, in their plain
print frocks, for six goddesses reclining on the knoll and watching
the harvesters at work on the plain below--poor drudging mortals and
unmannerly:

"High births and virtue equally they scorn,
As asses dull, on dunghills born;
Impervious as the stones their heads are found,
Their rage and hatred steadfast as the ground."

(The lines were Hetty's.) When the Wesleys descended and walked among
these churls, it was as beings of another race; imperious in pride
and strength of will. They meant kindly. But the country-folk came
of an obstinate stock, fierce to resent what they could not
understand. Half a century before, a Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden
by name, had arrived and drained their country for them; in return
they had cursed him, fired his crops, and tried to drown out his
settlers and workmen by smashing the dams and laying the land under
water. Fierce as they were, these fenmen read in the Wesleys a will
to match their own and beat it; a scorn, too, which cowed, but at the
same time turned them sullen. Parson Wesley they frankly hated.
Thrice they had flooded his crops and twice burnt the roof over his
head.

If the six sisters were handsome, Hetty was glorious. Her hair,
something browner than auburn, put Emilia's in the shade; her brows,
darker even than dark Patty's, were broader and more nobly arched;
her transparent skin, her colour--she defied the sunrays carelessly,
and her cheeks drank them in as potable gold clarifying their blood--
made Nancy's seem bu