a few minutes after Margaret had made an end of her fine harangue, it
is certain her cheeks _did_ look very _rosy_. That might have been
from the heat of the day or from exercise, for she had been walking
in the garden.

Margaret, we know, was blind; and, in this case, it was lucky for
Rosamund that she was so, or she might have made some not unlikely
surmises.

I must not have my reader infer from this, that I at all think it
likely, a young maid of fourteen would fall in love without asking
her grandmother's leave--the thing itself is not to be conceived.

To obviate all suspicions, I am disposed to communicate a little
anecdote of Rosamund.

A month or two back her grandmother had been giving her the strictest
prohibitions, in her walks, not to go near a certain spot, which was
dangerous from the circumstance of a huge overgrown oak-tree
spreading its prodigious arms across a deep chalk-pit, which they
partly concealed.

To this fatal place Rosamund came one day--female curiosity, we know,
is older than the flood--let us not think hardly of the girl, if she
partook of the sexual failing.

Rosamund ventured further and further--climbed along one of the
branches--approached the forbidden chasm--her foot slipped--she was
not killed--but it was by a mercy she escaped--other branches
intercepted her fall--and with a palpitating heart she made her way