t a dairymaid's complexion. Add that this
colouring kept an April freshness; add, too, her mother's height and
more than her mother's grace of movement, an outline virginally
severe yet flexuous as a palm-willow in April winds; and you have
Hetty Wesley at twenty-seven--a queen in a country frock and cobbled
shoes; a scholar, a lady, amongst hinds; above all, a woman made for
love and growing towards love surely, though repressed and thwarted.

Emilia read:

"So spake our general mother, and, with eyes
Of conjugal attraction unreproved,
And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned
On our first father; half her swelling breast
Naked met his, under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid; he, in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms,
Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter
On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip
With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned
For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:--
'Sight hateful, sight tormenting!' . . ."

Molly interrupted with a cry; so fiercely Hetty had gripped her wrist
of a sudden. Emily broke off:

"What on earth's the matter, child?"

"Is it an adder?" asked Patty, whose mind was ever practical.
"Johnny Whitelamb warned us--"

"An adder?" Hetty answered her, cool in a moment and deliberate.
"Nothing like it, my dear; 'tis the old genuine Serpent."

"What do you mean, Hetty? Where is it?"

"Sit down, child, and don't distress yourself. Having rendered
everybody profoundly uncomfortable within a circuit of two miles and
almost worried itself to a sun-stroke, it has now gone into the house
to write at a commentary on the Book of Job, to be illustrated with
cuts, for one of which--to wit, the War-horse which saith, 'Ha, ha,'
among the trumpets--you observe Johnny Whitelamb making a study at
this moment."

"I think you must mean papa," said Patty; "and I call it very
disrespectful to compare him with Satan; for 'twas Satan sister Emmy
was reading about."

"So she was: but if you had read Plutarch every morning with papa, as
I have, you would know that the best authors (whom I imitate)
sometimes use comparisons for the sake of contrast. Satan, you
heard, eyed our first parents askance: papa would have stepped in
earlier and forbidden Adam the house. Proceed, Emilia! How goes