the child so quickly into a woman, as such death-bed scenes as these. Hitherto but little had fallen to Lucy to do in the way of woman's duties. Of money transactions she had known nothing beyond a jocose attempt to make her annual allowance of twenty-five pounds cover all her personal wants—an attempt which was made jocose by the loving bounty of her father. Her sister, who was three years her elder—for John came in between them—had managed the house; that is, she made the tea, and talked to the housekeeper about the dinners. But Lucy had sat at her father's elbow, had read to him of evenings when he went to sleep, had brought him his slippers and looked after the comforts of his easy-chair. All this she had done as a child; but when she stood at the coffin head, and knelt at the coffin side, then she was a woman.
She was smaller in stature than either of her three sisters, to all of whom had been acceded the praise of being fine women—a eulogy which the people of Exeter, looking back at the elder sister, and the general remembrance of them which pervaded the city, were not willing to extend to Lucy. "Dear! dear!" had been said of her, "poor Lucy is not like a Robarts at all; is she, now, Mrs. Pole?" for, as the daughters had grown into fine women, so had the sons grown into stalwart men. And then Mrs. Pole had answered, "Not a bit; is she, now? Only think what Blanche was at her age. But she has fine eyes for all that; and they do say she is the cleverest of them all."
And that, too, is so true a description of her, that I do not know that I can add much to it. She was not like Blanche; for Blanche had a bright complexion, and a fine neck, and a noble bust, et vera incessu patuit Dea—a true goddess, that is, as far as the eye went. She had a grand idea, moreover, of an apple-pie, and had not reigned eighteen months at Creamclotted Hall before she knew all the mysteries of pigs and milk, and most of those appertaining to cider and green geese. Lucy had no neck at all worth speaking of—no neck, I mean, that ever produced eloquence; she was brown, too, and had addicted herself in no wise, as she undoubtedly should have done, to larder utility. In regard to the neck and color, poor girl, she could not help herself; but in that other respect she must be held as having wasted her opportunities.
But then what eyes she had! Mrs. Pole was right there.
