Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation!

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered
her old acquaintance again--some altered features, of course, a little
grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy;
but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections--and she
traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds
were alike flown)--with a breathless impatience of recognition, which
was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But
Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house--and that was a
difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I
am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date
kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without
me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to
a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the
Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the
old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females,
were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this
adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all--more comely. She
was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early
life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing
a style. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those
slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere
of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely,
loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted
as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to