Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
her about the house.
To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as
though to try and puff those little feet up to the heaven where he
belonged, trusting to his wings (of the best pearl beads) to bear him
after her.
Loveday paused, stricken, not with embarrassment, but with awe, upon the
threshold.
Sight of Cherry and Primrose had deepened her sense of her own isolation
and her pain. Sight of Miss Le Pettit made her forget all save what she
saw.
Blow, little cherub, puff your cherubic hardest, never can you waft
Flora Le Pettit higher than she now is, at least in the sight of one
pair of black eyes, higher, perhaps, than she will ever be again, even
in that of her own not uncomplacent orbs.
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