Cavendish should think that she stood in need of such amendment of
nature. Down she knelt, dragging the hem of her chintz gown, which
was as gay with a maze of printed posies as any garden bed, and she
thrust her hollowed hands into the dew-laden green and brought them
over her face and rubbed till sure there was never anything like it
for sweet, glowing rosiness. And Cicely Hyde, who must have come
full early to Drake Hill for that purpose, did likewise, and with
more need, as I thought, for she was a brown maid, not so fair of
feature as some, though she had a merry heart, which gave to her
such a zest of life and welcome of friends as made her a favourite.
Up she scooped the dew and bathed her face, turning ever and anon to
Mary Cavendish with anxious inquiries, ending in trills of laughter
which would not be gainsaid in May-time and youth-time by aught of
so little moment as a brown skin. "How look I now?" she would cry
out. "How look I now, sweetheart? Saw you ever a lily as fair as my
face?" Then Mary, with her own face dripping with dew, with that
wonderful wet freshness of bloom upon it, would eye her with
seriousness as to any improvement, and bid her turn this way and
that. Then she would give it as her opinion that she had best
persevere, and laugh somewhat doubtfully at first, then in a full
peal when Cicely, nothing daunted by such discouragement in her
friend's eyes, went bravely to work again, all her slender body
shaking with mirth. But the most curious sight of all, and that
which occasioned the two maids the most merriment, though of a
covert and even tender and pitying sort, was Mary's black
serving-wench Sukey, a half-grown girl, who had been bidden to
attend her mistress upon this morning frolic. She was seated at a
distance, square in the wet greenness, and was plunging both hands
into the May dew and scrubbing her face with a fierce zeal, as if
her heart was in that pretty folly, as no doubt it was. And ever and