If the six sisters were handsome, Hetty was glorious.  Her hair, something browner than auburn, put Emilia’s in the shade; her brows, darker even than dark Patty’s, were broader and more nobly arched; her transparent skin, her colour—­she defied the sunrays carelessly, and her cheeks drank them in as potable gold clarifying their blood—­ made Nancy’s seem but a dairymaid’s complexion.  Add that this colouring kept an April freshness; add, too, her mother’s height and more than her mother’s grace of movement, an outline virginally severe yet flexuous as a palm-willow in April winds; and you have Hetty Wesley at twenty-seven—­a queen in a country frock and cobbled shoes; a scholar, a lady, amongst hinds; above all, a woman made for love and growing towards love surely, though repressed and thwarted.

Emilia read: 

     “So spake our general mother, and, with eyes
      Of conjugal attraction unreproved,
      And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned
      On our first father; half her swelling breast
      Naked met his, under the flowing gold
      Of her loose tresses hid; he, in delight
      Both of her beauty and submissive charms,
      Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter
      On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds
      That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip
      With kisses pure.  Aside the Devil turned
      For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
      Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:—­
     ‘Sight hateful, sight tormenting!’ . . .”

Molly interrupted with a cry; so fiercely Hetty had gripped her wrist of a sudden.  Emily broke off: 

“What on earth’s the matter, child?”

“Is it an adder?” asked Patty, whose mind was ever practical.  “Johnny Whitelamb warned us—­”

“An adder?” Hetty answered her, cool in a moment and deliberate.  “Nothing like it, my dear; ’tis the old genuine Serpent.”

“What do you mean, Hetty?  Where is it?”

“Sit down, child, and don’t distress yourself.  Having rendered everybody profoundly uncomfortable within a circuit of two miles and almost worried itself to a sun-stroke, it has now gone into the house to write at a commentary on the Book of Job, to be illustrated with cuts, for one of which—­to wit, the War-horse which saith, ‘Ha, ha,’ among the trumpets—­you observe Johnny Whitelamb making a study at this moment.”

“I think you must mean papa,” said Patty; “and I call it very disrespectful to compare him with Satan; for ’twas Satan sister Emmy was reading about.”

“So she was:  but if you had read Plutarch every morning with papa, as I have, you would know that the best authors (whom I imitate) sometimes use comparisons for the sake of contrast.  Satan, you heard, eyed our first parents askance:  papa would have stepped in earlier and forbidden Adam the house.  Proceed, Emilia!  How goes Milton on?—­