ue shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious or strange
than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight
hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes
away with the first word. When sharply spoken to, she was apt to lose
her head at once; but her heart was of the kindest. She had never been
heard to express a dislike for a single human being, and she was tender
to every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith,
to their dogs, cats, canaries; and as to Mrs. Smith's grey parrot, its
peculiarities exercised upon her a positive fascination. Nevertheless,
when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat, shrieked for help in
human accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her ears, and did
not prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another evidence of her
stupidity; on the other hand, her want of charm, in view of Smith's
well-known frivolousness, was a great recommendation. Her short-sighted
eyes would swim with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had been
seen once by some boys on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad in
difficulties. If it's true, as some German fellow has said, that without
phosphorus there is no thought, it is still more true that there is no
kindness of heart without a certain amount of imagination. She had some.
She had even more than is necessary to understand suffering and to be
moved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that leave no room
for doubt in the matter; for you need imagination to form a notion of
beauty at all, and still more to discover your ideal in an unfamiliar
shape.

"How this aptitude came to her, what it did feed upon, is an inscrutable
mystery. She was born in the village, and had never been further away
from it than Colebrook or perhaps Darnford. She lived for four years
with the Smiths. New Barns is an isolated farmhouse a mile away from
the road, and she was content to look day after day at the same fields,
hollows, rises; at the trees and the hedgerows; at the faces of the four
men about the farm, always the same--day after day, month after month,
year after year. She never showed a desire for conversation, and, as it
seemed to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes of a fine Sunday
afternoon she would put on her best dress, a pair of stout boots, a
large grey hat trimmed with a black feather (I've seen her in that
finery), seize an absurdly slender parasol, climb over two