One day, about the time of our Cliffe Royal adventure, I was seated
in the cottage looking round at the curios which my father had
fastened on to the walls, and wishing, like the lazy lad that I was,
that Mr. Lilly had died before ever he wrote his Latin grammar, when
my mother, who was sitting knitting in the window, gave a little cry
of surprise.

"Good gracious!" she cried. "What a vulgar-looking woman!"

It was so rare to hear my mother say a hard word against anybody
(unless it were General Buonaparte) that I was across the room and
at the window in a jump. A pony-chaise was coming slowly down the
village street, and in it was the queerest-looking person that I had
ever seen. She was very stout, with a face that was of so dark a
red that it shaded away into purple over the nose and cheeks. She
wore a great hat with a white curling ostrich feather, and from
under its brim her two bold, black eyes stared out with a look of
anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that she thought less of
them than they could do of her. She had some sort of scarlet
pelisse with white swans-down about her neck, and she held the reins
slack in her hands, while the pony wandered from side to side of the
road as the fancy took him. Each time the chaise swayed, her head
with the great hat swayed also, so that sometimes we saw the crown
of it and sometimes the brim.

"What a dreadful sight!" cried my mother.

"What is amiss with her, mother?"

"Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her, Rodney, but I think that the