THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
ner of glints and shadows between the two extremes. Of forehead there was not much, for forehead we ask not, and shall not cry "gra'merci" if you exhibit to us one never so lofty and well compacted; but what eyebrows and lashes, and below what eyes—black, or say rather, like two deep wells at noonday, with stars shining in them, and in these wells many were drowned, and all swore there's none such pleasant death as drowning. Her nose was a special nose, neither too long nor too short, too flat nor too high, too thin nor too thick, but had just that little turn at the end which virtuosi in noses declare to be desirable. For these gentlemen aver that this dainty button says as much as "I'm a woman and not an angel," and is a sure sign of those charming imperfections which make ladies perfect. As for Bertha's mouth it was (to be honest with you) the only member of her that could be taxed or censured. Why? For that it was incomplete and not perfect nor sufficient in itself, being so choicely and rarely contrived with concave and convex parts that it was evidently devised to fit into another piece of like workmanship, if nature had turned out any at all comparable with it. Of her chin I must maintain that it was a chin dear, delicate, and intolerably precious, with dimples playing at Barley Break across it, as sunshine quivers across the rippling water of a pebbly brook, when it has to pass through many leaves, and lights now here, now there, according as the breeze stirs the boughs high or low, to right or left. And what a figure had this noble maiden! One must not go closely into these
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