Everybody called her “pretty Miss Kate.” It was an odd title, and she had come by it in an odd way. A sort of half-witted nurse, whose one supreme merit was her faithfulness, had tended Squire Oswald’s baby daughter all through her early years; and she it was who had first called the girl “pretty Miss Kate.”
It was a small neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else; and, by dint of much hearing this title, all the neighbors grew to use it. And, indeed, at fifteen Kate Oswald deserved it. She was a tall, slight girl, with a figure very graceful, and what people call stylish.
She had blue eyes; not the meaningless blue of a French doll, but deep and lustrous, like the tender hue of the summer sky. She had hair like some Northland princess. It had not a tint of yellow in it, but it was fine and fair, and so light as to be noticeable anywhere. Her skin was exquisite, too, as skin needs must be to match such hair. When any color came to the cheeks it was never crimson, but just the faintest tint of the blush rose; her lips alone were of rich, vivid bloom. A prettier creature, truly, seldom crosses this planet; and the few such girls who have lived among us, and grown to womanhood, have made wild work generally, using hearts for playthings; and, like other children, breaking their toys now and then. But pretty Miss Kate was not at the age yet for that sort of pastime, and her most ardent worshipper was little Sally Green.
There was a curious friendship between these two, if one may call that friendship which is made up of blind worship on one side and gentle pity and kindliness on the other.
Squire Oswald owned the poor little house where Widow Green lived, and whenever there was an unusual press of work at the great house above, the family washing used to be sent down to Mrs. Green at the foot of the hill. Many an hour the widow worked busily, fluting the delicate ruffles and smoothing the soft muslins, out of which pretty Miss Kate used to bloom as a flower does out of its calyx. And on these occasions Sally used to carry the dainty washing home, and she nearly always contrived to be permitted to take it up to Miss Kate’s room, herself.
Nobody thought much about little Sally Green any way,—least of all did any one suspect her of any romantic or heroic or poetical qualities. And yet she had them all; and if you came to a question of soul and mind, there was something in Sally which entitled her to rank with the best. She was a plain, dark little thing, with a stubbed, solid, squarely-built figure; with great black eyes, which nobody thought any thing about in her, but which would have been enough for the whole stock-in-trade of a fashionable belle; with masses of black hair that she did not know what to do with; and with a skin somewhat sallow, but smooth. No one ever thought how she looked, except, perhaps, pretty Miss Kate.
One day, when the child brought home the washing, Kate had been reading aloud to a friend, and Sally had shown an evident inclination to linger. At that time Kate was not more than fourteen, and the interest or the admiration in Sally’s face struck her, and, moved by a girl’s quick impulse, she had said,—
“Do you want to hear all of it, Sally? Wait, then, and I will read it to you.”
The poem was Mrs. Browning’s “Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” and it was the first glimpse for Sally Green into the enchanted land of poetry and fiction. Before that she had admired pretty Miss Kate, but now the feeling grew to worship.