the
hour on a little stool, chatting like any magpie, when the nature of his
occupation allowed his thoughts to wander, silent as a mouse when she
perceived that his mind was absorbed in travail--ready at any moment to
fetch this or hold t'other, and seizing every opportunity to serve him.
Indeed, I believe she would gladly have helped him shift the heavy
planks, when he would have their position altered, had he permitted her
this rough usage of her delicate hands. One day, when he was about to
begin the foliage upon his balcony, he brought in a spray of ivy for a
model; then Moll told him she knew where much better was to be found,
and would have him go with her to see it. And she, coming back from this
expedition, with her arms full of briony and herbage, richly tinted by
the first frost, I perceived that there was a new kind of beauty in her
face, a radiance of great happiness and satisfaction which I had never
seen there before.

Here was herbage enough for a week, but she must have fresh the next
morning, and thenceforth every day they would go out ere the sun was
high, hunting for new models.

To prepare for these early excursions, Mistress Moll, though commonly
disposed to lie abed late in the morning, must have been up by daybreak.
And, despite her admiration of Dario's simplicity in dress, she showed
no inclination to follow his example in this particular; but, on the
contrary, took more pains in adorning her person at this time than ever
she had done before; and as she would dress her hair no two mornings
alike, so she would change the fashion of her dress with the same
inconstancy until the sly hussy discovered which did most please Dario's
taste; then a word of approval from him, nay, a glance, would suffice to
fix her choice until she found that his admiration needed rekindling.
And so, as if her own imagination was not sufficiently forcible, she
would talk of nothing with her friends but the newest fashions at court,
with the result that her maids were for ever a-brewing some new wash for
her face (which she considered too brown), compounding charms to remove
a little mole she had in the nape of her neck, cutting up one gown to
make another, and so forth. One day she presented herself with a black
patch at the corner of her lip, and having seen nought of this fashion
before, I cried out in alarm:

"Lord, child! have you injured your face with that mess Betty was
stewing yesterday?"

"What an absurd, o