balancing her jar, while they still stared at the change in her.



CHAPTER III: IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST
TIME FEELS AS A GIRL




Chapter III

IN WHICH SHE FOR THE FIRST TIME FEELS AS A GIRL


Primrose Lear was wife to the son of old Farmer Lear, of Upper Farm,
whither Loveday was bound. Willie Lear, the young man, was gay and
handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad,
from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider.
Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like
a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the
big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law give
her about the house.

To-day, however, Mrs. Lear was in the parlour, and no less a personage
than Miss Le Pettit of Ignores was seated on the best horsehair
armchair, her bonneted head, with its drooping feather, leaning
gracefully against the lace antimacassar, and her small prunella boots
elegantly crossed on the smiling cheeks of the beadwork cherub that
adorned the footstool, and that seemed to be puffing the harder, as