morning. It lasted half a minute, and left a ruffle for a good half-
hour. Even the younger fellows, without knowing what affected them, were
moved by the new picture of a girl, as if it had been a frontispiece of a
romantic story some day to be read. She looked compelled to look, but
consenting and unashamed; at home in submission; just the look that wins
observant boys, shrewd as dogs to read by signs, if they are interested
in the persons. They read Browny's meaning: that Matey had only to come
and snatch her; he was her master, and she was a brave girl, ready to go
all over the world with him; had taken to him as he to her, shot for
shot. Her taking to the pick of the school was a capital proof that she
was of the right sort. To be sure, she could not much help herself.

Some of the boys regretted her not being fair. But, as they felt, and
sought to explain, in the manner of the wag of a tail, with elbows and
eyebrows to one another's understanding, fair girls could never have let
fly such look; fair girls are softer, woollier, and when they mean to
look serious, overdo it by craping solemn; or they pinafore a jigging
eagerness, or hoist propriety on a chubby flaxen grin; or else they dart
an eye, or they mince and prim and pout, and are sigh-away and dying-
ducky, given to girls' tricks. Browny, after all, was the girl for
Matey.

She won a victory right away and out of hand, on behalf of her cloud-and-
moon sisters, as against the sunny-meadowy; for slanting intermediates
are not espied of boys in anything: conquered by Browny; they went over
to her colour, equal to arguing, that Venus at her mightiest must have
been dark, or she would not have stood a comparison with the forest
Goddess of the Crescent, swanning it through a lake--on the leap for run
of the chase--watching the dart, with her humming bow at breast. The
fair are simple sugary thing's, prone to fat, like broad-sops in milk;