The girl frowned as she gazed over this group, over the harvesters, the fens, the dykes, and away toward Epworth:  and even her frown became her mightily.  Her favourite sister, Molly, seated beside her, and glancing now and again at her face, believed that the whole world contained nothing so beautiful.  But this was a fixed belief of Molly’s.  She was a cripple, and in spite of features made almost angelic by the ineffable touch of goodness, the family as a rule despised her, teased her, sometimes went near to torment her; for the Wesleys, like many other people of iron constitution, had a healthy impatience of deformity and weakness.  Hetty alone treated her always gently and made much of her, not as one who would soften a defect, but as seeing none; Hetty of the high spirits, the clear eye, the springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them all; Hetty, glorious to look upon.

All the six were handsome.  Here they are in their order:  Emilia, aged thirty-three (it was she who held the book); Molly, twenty-eight; Hetty, twenty-seven; Nancy, twenty-two, lusty, fresh-complexioned, and the least bit stupid; Patty, nearing eighteen, dark-skinned and serious, the one of the Wesleys who could never be persuaded to see a joke; and Kezzy, a lean child of fifteen, who had outgrown her strength.  By baptism, Molly was Mary; Hetty, Mehetabel; Nancy, Anne; Patty, Martha; and Kezzy, Kezia.  But the register recording most of these names had perished at Epworth in the Parsonage fire, so let us keep the familiar ones.  Grown women and girls, all the six were handsome.  They had an air of resting there aloof; with a little fancy you might have taken them, in their plain print frocks, for six goddesses reclining on the knoll and watching the harvesters at work on the plain below—­poor drudging mortals and unmannerly: 

     “High births and virtue equally they scorn,
      As asses dull, on dunghills born;
      Impervious as the stones their heads are found,
      Their rage and hatred steadfast as the ground.”

(The lines were Hetty’s.) When the Wesleys descended and walked among these churls, it was as beings of another race; imperious in pride and strength of will.  They meant kindly.  But the country-folk came of an obstinate stock, fierce to resent what they could not understand.  Half a century before, a Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden by name, had arrived and drained their country for them; in return they had cursed him, fired his crops, and tried to drown out his settlers and workmen by smashing the dams and laying the land under water.  Fierce as they were, these fenmen read in the Wesleys a will to match their own and beat it; a scorn, too, which cowed, but at the same time turned them sullen.  Parson Wesley they frankly hated.  Thrice they had flooded his crops and twice burnt the roof over his head.