Blow, little cherub, but even if you burst the roseate beads from off
your cheeks in your ardour, leaving forlornly drooping the grey threads
that would show you as, after all, of mere mortal manufacture, you could
not cast a doubt as big as the tiniest bead upon the heavenly origin of
Miss Le Pettit--not, at least, in the heart of the devout worshipper
born in that instant upon the black woollen doormat.
The angelic visitant put up a tortoise-shell lorgnon and examined the
newcomer with a flicker of condescending interest. For Flora was a young
lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled
by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst
them educate and make an art of it. Miss Le Pettit, then, encouraged her
sensibility, nursed it, nourished it, on the most exquisite of novels
and the rarest of romances, and these had taught her to show even more
sensibility than usual at sight of a barefoot girl with black hair and
eyes and an arresting, though wholly unconscious air that could but be
described by Miss Le Pettit, to herself and afterwards to her friends,
as Italianate.
"What an interesting face and figure!" she now exclaimed, at gaze
through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful
for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from
the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say
nothing of woollen doormats.
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