"Sir Jeoffry missed his mark when he called her an ugly brat," said the
woman who had nursed her. "She will be a handsome woman--though large in
build, it may be. She will be a brown beauty, but she will have a colour
in her cheeks and lips like the red of Christmas holly, and her owl's
eyes are as black as sloes, and have fringes on them like the curtains of
a window. See how her hair grows thick on her little head, and how it
curls in great rings. My lady, her poor mother, was once a beauty, but
she was no such beauty as this one will be, for she has her father's long
limbs and fine shoulders, and the will to make every man look her way."

"Yes," said the housekeeper, who was an elderly woman, "there will be
doings--there will be doings when she is a ripe young maid. She will
take her way, and God grant she mayn't be _too_ like her father and
follow his."

It was true that she had no resemblance to her plain sisters, and bore no
likeness to them in character. The two elder children, Anne and Barbara,
were too meek-spirited to be troublesome; but during Clorinda's infancy
Mistress Margery Wimpole watched her rapid growth with fear and qualms.
She dare not reprove the servants who were ruining her by their
treatment, and whose manners were forming her own. Sir Jeoffry's
servants were no more moral than their master, and being brought up as
she was among them, their young mistress became strangely familiar with
many sights and sounds it is not the fortune of most young misses of
breeding to see and hear. The cooks and kitchen-wenches were flighty
with the grooms and men-servants, and little Mistress Clorinda, having a
passion for horses and dogs, spent many an hour in the stables with the
women who, for reasons of their own, were pleased enough to take her
there as an excuse for seeking amusement for themselves. She played in