Mrs. Carnegie entered with her, and shut the door; for the two-leaved lattice was wide open, and the muslin curtains were blowing half across the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie Fairfax’s “own room” ever since she came to live in the doctor’s house.  Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat.  There were assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been rescued from the rectory-sale after her father’s death; two miniatures, not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents; a faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House, and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl, two jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume of roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl’s collection.  But Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of Greece and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given a fair account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially delightful.  She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender and careful mother.

And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so early to the caprices of fortune?  It is not to be pretended that she reached the heroic standard.  Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a girl’s bones might stand almost as well for a boy’s, and there was, indeed, something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie’s air and aspect at this date.  She walked well, danced well, rode well—­looked to the manner born when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the doctor on his second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie in his company when he was going on a round, where, at certain points, rest and refreshment were to be had for man and beast.  Her figure had not the promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned, and her face was a capital letter of introduction.  Feature by feature, it was, perhaps, not classical, but never was a girl nicer looking taken altogether; the firm sweetness of her mouth, the clear candor of her blue eyes, the fair breadth of her forehead, from which her light golden-threaded hair stood off in a wavy halo, and the downy peach of her round cheeks made up a most kissable, agreeable face.  And there were sense and courage in it as well as sweetness; qualities which in her peculiar circumstances would not be liable to rust for want of using.