happiness always made her quiet, as nothing but sorrow will make some,
I do not presume to say. I only know that, had her bliss changed
suddenly to sadness, Kirsty would have been quiet still. Whatever came
to Kirsty seemed right, for there it was!

She was now a girl of sixteen. The only sign she showed of interest in
her person, appeared in her hair and the covering of her neck. Of one
of the many middle shades of brown, with a rippling tendency to curl in
it, her hair was parted with nicety, and drawn back from her face into
a net of its own colour, while her neckerchief was of blue silk,
covering a very little white skin, but leaving bare a brown throat. She
wore a blue print wrapper, nowise differing from that of a peasant
woman, and a blue winsey petticoat, beyond which appeared her bare
feet, lovely in shape, and brown of hue. Her dress was nowise trim, and
suggested neither tidiness nor disorder. The hem of the petticoat was
in truth a little rent, but not more than might seem admissible where
the rough wear was considered to which the garment was necessarily
exposed: when a little worse it would receive the proper attention, and
be brought back to respectability! Kirsty grudged the time spent on her
garments. She looked down on them as the moon might on the clouds
around her. She made or mended them to wear them, not think about them.

Her forehead was wide and rather low, with straight eyebrows. Her eyes
were of a gentle hazel, not the hazel that looks black at night. Her
nose was strong, a little irregular, with plenty of substance, and
sensitive nostrils. A decided and well-shaped chin dominated a neck by
no means slender, and seemed to assert the superiority of the face over
the whole beautiful body. Its chief expression was of a strong repose,
a sweet, powerful peace, requiring but occasion to pass into
determination. The sensitiveness of the nostrils with the firmness in