hes in this melody; but her voice was full of the
freshness of dawn. The contrast was quaint and pleasing; people said,
"Miss Deruchette is at her piano."

The passers-by at the foot of the hill stopped sometimes before the wall
of the garden of the Bravees to listen to that sweet voice and plaintive
song.

Deruchette was the very embodiment of joy as she went to and fro in the
house. She brought with her a perpetual spring. She was beautiful, but
more pretty than beautiful; and still more graceful than pretty. She
reminded the good old pilots, friends of Mess Lethierry, of that
princess in the song which the soldiers and sailors sing, who was so
beautiful:

"Qu'elle passait pour telle dans le regiment."

Mess Lethierry used to say, "She has a head of hair like a ship's
cable."

From her infancy she had been remarkable for beauty. The learned in such
matters had grave doubts about her nose, but the little one having
probably determined to be pretty, had finally satisfied their
requirements. She grew to girlhood without any serious loss of beauty;
her nose became neither too long nor too short; and when grown up, her
critics admitted her to be charming.

She never addressed her uncle otherwise than as father.

Lethierry allowed her to soil her fingers a little in gardening, and
even in some kind of household duties: she watered her beds of pink
hollyhocks, purple foxgloves, perennial phloxes, and scarlet herb
bennets. She took good advantage of the climate of Guernsey, so
favourable to flowers. She had, like many other persons there, aloes in
the open ground, and, what is more difficult, she succeeded in
cultivating the Nepaulese cinquefoil. Her little kitchen-garden was
scientifically arranged; she was able to produce from it several kinds
of rare vegetables. She sowed Dutch cauliflower and Brussels cabbages,
which she thinned out in July, turnips for August, endive for September,
short parsnip for the autumn, and rampions for winter. Mess Lethierry
did not interfere with her in this, so long as she did not handle the
spade and rake too much, or meddle with the coarser kinds of garden
labour. He had provided her with two servants, one named Grace, and the
other Douce, which are favourite names in Guernsey. Grace and Douce did
the hard work of the house and garden, and they had the right to have
red hands.

With regard to Mess Lethierry, his room was a little retreat with a view
over the harbour, and commu