She had gone through that grading process and come out.  By Jupiter! when she met me at the door of Smith’s pretty, English-looking cottage, I took my hat off, she was so like that little Brazilian princess we used to see in the cortege of the court at Paris.  What was her name?  Never mind that!  Kate had just such large, expressive eyes, just such masses of shiny black hair, just such a little nose,—­turned up undeniably, but all the more piquant.  And her teeth! good gracious! she smiled like a flash of lightning,—­dark and sallow as she was.  But she was cross, or stiff, or something, to me for a long time.  Peggy only appeared after dinner, looking pale and lovely enough in her loose wrapper to make Peter act excessively like——­a young married man, and to make me wish myself at an invisible distance, doing something beside picking up Kate’s things, that she always dropped on the floor whenever she sewed.  Peggy saw I was bored, so she requested me one day to walk down to the poultry-yard and ask about her chickens; she pretended a great deal of anxiety, and Peter had sprained his ankle.

“Kate will go with you,” said she.

“No, she won’t!” ejaculated that young woman.

“Thank you,” said I, making a minuet bow, and off I went to the farm-house.  Such a pretty walk it was, too! through a thicket of birches, down a little hill-side into a hollow full of hoary chestnut-trees, across a bubbling, dancing brook, and you came out upon the tiniest orchard in the world, a one-storied house with a red porch, and a great sweet-brier bush thereby; while up the hill-side behind stretched a high picket fence, enclosing huge trees, part of the same brook I had crossed here dammed into a pond, and a chicken-house of pretentious height and aspect,—­one of those model institutions that are the ruin of gentlemen-farmers and the delight of women.  I had to go into the farm-kitchen for the poultry-yard key.  The door stood open, and I stepped in cautiously, lest I should come unaware upon some domestic scene not intended to be visible to the naked eye.  And a scene I did come upon, fit for Retzsch to outline;—­the cleanest kitchen, a dresser of white wood under one window, and the farmer’s daughter, Melinda Tucker, moulding bread thereat in a ponderous tray; her deep red hair,—­yes, it was red and comely! of the deepest bay, full of gilded reflections, and accompanied by the fair, rose-flushed skin, blue eyes, and scarlet lips that belong to such hair,—­which, as I began to say, was puckered into a thousand curves trying to curl, and knotted strictly against a pretty head, while her calico frock-sleeves were pinned-back to the shoulders, baring such a dimpled pair of arms,—­how they did fly up and down in the tray!  I stood still contemplating the picture, and presently seeing her begin to strip the dough from her pink fingers and mould it into a mass, I ventured to knock.  If you had seen her start and blush, Polder!  But when she saw me, she grew as cool as you please, and called her mother.  Down came Mrs. Tucker, a talking Yankee.  You don’t know what that is.  Listen, then.