Soft hair on which light drops a diadem.
Gerald Massey.
With hands so flower-like, soft and fair,
She caught at life with words as sweet
As first spring violets.
Ibid.
No, it was not a bad room, that room of Mrs. Watkins’s, seen just now in the November dusk, with its bright fire and neat hearth, with the kettle gossiping deliciously to itself; there was at once something comfortable and homelike about it; especially as the red curtains were drawn across the two windows that look down into High Street, and the great carts that had been rumbling underneath them since daybreak had given place to the jolting of lighter vehicles which passed and repassed at intervals.
The room was large, though a little low, and was plainly but comfortably furnished; an old-fashioned crimson couch stood in one corner; some stained book-shelves contained a few well-bound books; and one or two simple engravings in cheap frames adorned the wall. In spite of the simplicity of the whole there were evidences of refined taste—there were growing ferns in tall baskets; some red leaves and autumn berries arranged in old china vases; a beautiful head of Clytie, though it was only in plaster of Paris, on the mantel-piece. The pretty tea service on the round table was only white china, hand-painted; and some more red leaves with dark chrysanthemums were tastefully arranged in a low wicker-basket in the center.
One glance would have convinced even a stranger that this room was inhabited by people of cultured taste and small means; and it was so pleasant, so home-like, so warm with ruddy fire-light, that grander rooms would have looked comfortless in comparison. There were only two people in it on this November evening—a girl lying back in a rocking-chair, with her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the dancing flames, and a child of ten, though looking two or three years younger, sitting on a stool before the fire, with a black kitten asleep on her lap, and her arms clasped round her knees.
An odd, weird sort of child, with a head running over with little dark curls, and large wondering eyes—not an ordinary child, and certainly not a pretty one, and looking, at the present moment, with her wrinkled eyebrows and huddled-up figure, like a little old witch in a fairy tale.