'
'Won't you have your tea first, papa?'
'Oh yes, if it's ready.'
'The kettle has been boiling for a long time, but I wouldn't make
the tea till you came in.'
Mr. Lindsay was an hour later than usual, but Mysie was quite
unaware of that: she had been absorbed in her book, too much
absorbed even to ring for better light than the fire afforded. When
her father went to put off his long, bifurcated greatcoat, she
returned to her seat by the fire, and forgot to make the tea. It
was a warm, snug room, full of dark, old-fashioned, spider-legged
furniture; low-pitched, with a bay-window, open like an ear to the
cries of the German Ocean at night, and like an eye during the day
to look out upon its wide expanse. This ear or eye was now
curtained with dark crimson, and the room, in the firelight, with
the young girl for a soul to it, affected one like an ancient book
in which he reads his own latest thought.
Mysie was nothing over the middle height--delicately-fashioned, at
once slender and round, with extremities neat as buds. Her
complexion was fair, and her face pale, except when a flush, like
that of a white rose, overspread it. Her cheek was lovelily curved,
and her face rather short. But at first one could see nothing for
her eyes. They were the largest eyes; and their motion reminded one
of those of Sordello in the Purgatorio:
E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda:
they seemed too large to move otherwise than with a slow turning
like that of the heavens.
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