"I can't tell you, I am sure, Ma'am. I saw nothing but a nice child enough, in a calico frock, just such as one would see in any farm-house. She rushed into the room when she was first called to see us, from somewhere in distant regions, with an immense iron ladle a foot and a half long in her hand, with which she had been performing unknown feats of housewifery; and they had left her head still encircled with a halo of kitchen smoke. If, as they say, 'coming events cast their shadows before,' she was the shadow of supper."
"O, Charlton, Charlton!" said Mrs. Evelyn, but in a tone of very gentle and laughing reproof, "for shame! What a picture! and of your cousin!"
"Is she a pretty child, Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton, who did not relish her son's grave face.
"No, Ma'am something more than that."
"How old?"
"About ten or eleven."
"That's an ugly age."
"She will never be at an ugly age."
"What style of beauty?"
"The highest that degree of mould and finish which belongs only to the finest material."