"You've a black, black heart, Barbara Lynn, though you've the face of a holy saint," she replied. "I believe you get a lot of pleasure out of waking me up in the morning. I was dreaming such heavenly dreams—all about grapes!"
She shook back her hair, which was black and glossy as a raven's wing, but her eyes, like Barbara's, were blue. All her movements were swift and decisive, for her spirit was made of quicksilver.
"You've an earthly mind," she added.
Barbara knotted a kerchief round her head, and glanced at a tiny mirror hanging on the wall. A flickering rushlight vied with the grey dawn to show the face reflected there. She sighed audibly.
"You're about right," she said. "I think it's clod-bound."
Lucy drew a curl between her lips, meditating upon her sister's reply.
"Where are you going?" she asked; "to Ketel's Parlour?"
"Not just now. I promised to help the hind with a rough bit of ploughing—that high field where we are going to plant potatoes. It's too steep for old Jan Straw to lead the horses there. He fell down yesterday! Poor Jan! he'll never work no more."
The sisters were silent as they thought of the old man, hardly so intelligent as the wild creatures of the woods and fells, but faithful to the last drop of his blood.
"I think he'll be glad to die," said Lucy.