plover's egg, and that at a time when no well brought-up damsel ventured
forth in the sun's rays without veil or parasol. Her face was deficient
in modelling, being one of those subtly concave faces not without a
fascination of their own, with an egg-like curve of prominent
delicately-square chin. Her mouth, too large, opened very beautifully
when she laughed over square thickly-white teeth. Her eyes were small
and of no particular colour, though bright with a birdlike shining
between the thick short lashes of a neutral brown. She had a something
boyish in poise and action that really made her charm, but that also set
her hopelessly out of her time. It was impossible to imagine Hilaria
happy in a crinoline, and she fought them fiercely, yet crinolines were
in full flower, and the one disported by the doctor's daughter of a
Sunday was the admiration and envy of the feminine members of the town.
"I should feel I was in a cage," quoth Hilaria at the suggestion that
she should trammel her long legs in such a contraption--unconsciously
hitting on the essential reason for the allure of crinolines. She had to
wear one now for dancing-class, as it made movement and spacing so
different; but other times she went her wilful way, short nose in air,
encouraged by the complacence of her father, who had no more knowledge
of what the country people called her "goings-on" than if he had lived
in an alien clime.

Hilaria was a hoyden. She despised crinolines, girls, Macassar oil,
sewing, and deportment. She adored walking, fishing, boys, and climbing
trees. She did outrageous things with a genuine innocence that made the
most sensual of the boys careful not to take advantage of her in any bad
way. That she climbed out of her bedroom window at night to go and meet
some three of the boys from the Grammar School and with them test the
wishing pool on the moor on Midsummer Eve was proof of all these things,
and yet what a scandal it made in St. Renny when the fact leaked out!...