cisely in what way no one could finally settle, enhanced the value of and gave consequence to their town. A rather wide street of straggling houses, some of the fine old red tone of years and years ago, others of new and pale brick, in colour like the crust of a slack-baked loaf: an old Norman church some hundred yards in the rear of the High Street, its walls of the rugged crumbly texture of the rind of a full-ripe Stilton cheese, and wonderfully freckled and variegated with alternate patches of moss and lichen: in the churchyard, shading quite a large group of graves, a yew tree, so dense that it looked quite black in the distance, and its straight, wide-spreading branches drew broad, dark, opaque streaks across the view of the church: the George Inn, "with good accommodation," &c., where Mr. Wilford Hadfield paused while the horses were changed on his journey to the Grange: the new Gothic school-house, built on part of the site of the old White Hart hotel, which had been closed for so long—(the last proprietor committed suicide on the day the last stage-coach went through the town for the last time; Grilling Abbots had been a famous place, and the White Hart its most noted hostel in the old pre-railroad times, when a score of coaches rattled daily along the High Street)—the Rectory, completely covered with ivy, like an old warrior coated with chain mail; the pump, the butcher's, the baker's, the blacksmith's: sum up these items, and you have Grilling Abbots, save that there has to be noted, in addition, a small white house—a little aloof from the town—standing in its own garden grounds, on the road to the Grange, and being the residence of Mr. Fuller, surgeon, &c.
There was no name to the house apparently: it was not known as Prospect, or Woodbine, or Clematis Cottage or Villa. Yet not a soul in the town but could point out the Doctor's, the pretty white building at the end of the town—where Mr. Fuller had lived, man and boy, these ever so many years.
A very pretty house—or cottage rather; the Doctor always called it a cottage; and, certainly, as its tenant, he ought to have known, if anybody ought, what to call it—with a thickly thatched roof—Uplandshire is a great county for thatched roofs—the thatch packed very even and tight, and cut off so sharply at the ends, that it looked like an agriculturist's closely clipped locks, the sharp line the roof took over each window resembling very much the curve of Hodge's hair over his ears; a pretty garden, too, daintily kept in summer time, with a lawn like a velvet-pile carpet, standard roses thickly studded with buds, neat sharp-edged beds brilliant with thickly growing verbena, and a honeysuckle trailing itself over the porch, clinging with languid gracefulness to the neat lattice-work. But this is the summer view of the place: we have winter now. The lawn is covered with snow, which paints white lines on every tree-bough, and sprinkles every hedge with crystal powder. Snow everywhere. The earth so bright with it that the sky looks quite a dull leaden grey by contrast, and the tree-trunks jet-black. The low-roofed rooms in the Doctor's cottage are quite lit up by the snow outside, which mounts upon the window-sills and clings to the sashes, till they look as though they were wadded with swan's-down to keep the cold out.
The house is more commodious than might at a first view be supposed. The drawing-room, though the ceiling is low, is quite a spacious apartment, and is built out at the back with a bow window, hung now with warm curtains, replacing the white muslin draperies of summer. Singing and flapping his wings furiously every now and then to keep himself warm probably, and pecking at his sugar as though he were really fighting with it on the ground of some long-standing animosity—a pretty bird, but blessed with a temper notwithstanding the good-natured looks of his black beads of eyes, Miss Madge Fuller's canary, dwells in an ornamental wire cage, something of a pagoda pattern (a mistake in costume as it were, for the bird didn't come from China), decorating the window. His mistress—whose affection is a little boisterous at times, and rather terrifies its object—has considerately supplied him with tepid water for his bath during the cold season. He has really a comfortable time of it, that bird, supposing him to have no strong notions on the subject of liberty, and that he holds that lacquered wires do not after all make a cage, for he is earnestly cared for and tended by the whole household; his appetite and tastes are considered, he has not to go foraging about like the vagabond birds outside, he has his food in regularly from his own greengrocer's, he sees plenty of society, he is often covered with kisses from the red lips of pretty Miss Madge (perhaps she does a little overdo this, so far as comfort is concerned), and in return, it is only expected of him that he will not sing too violently when company are in the room, nor fling about too many of his seeds on the drawing-room carpet—both which expectations, however, it may be said, he is continually disappointing.
A comfortable fire burns in the grate. Before it Miss Violet Fuller sits very busy indeed, sewing. It looks very much as though she were engaged on one of a new set of shirts for the Doctor, and bent upon putting the most minute work that ever was seen into his wristbands. Miss Violet is the housekeeper of the establishment, and has filled that position admirably, as every one in Grilling Abbots will certify, ever since the death of the Doctor's wife, many years ago.
Miss Violet is rather above the middle height; a slight lithe figure; very graceful in movement, and with a certain charming repose about her manner. She has large, grey, luminous eyes, beautifully shadowed and intensified in hue by their long overhanging lashes, a complexion radiantly fair, features delicately formed, and profuse coils of chestnut hair. Those intent upon the smaller traits of beauty would delight to note the exquisite lines of her mouth, and chin, and neck. As a rule, I think people are apt to overlook how really important are these matters in their bearing upon general perfectness of form. Indeed it seems to be sufficient for a woman to have big eyes, a respectable nose, and to make her hair shine with bear's-grease, for her to be adored as a beauty by a sufficiently large circle of admirers. In any discussion concerning the daughters of