any how tall or wide I be?  There is no Doone’s door at Plover’s Barrows and if there were I could never go through it.  They vexed me so much about my size, long before I had completed it, girding at me with paltry jokes whose wit was good only to stay at home, that I grew shame-faced about the matter, and feared to encounter a looking-glass.  But mother was very proud, and said she never could have too much of me.

The worst of all to make me ashamed of bearing my head so high—­a thing I saw no way to help, for I never could hang my chin down, and my back was like a gatepost whenever I tried to bend it—­the worst of all was our little Eliza, who never could come to a size herself, though she had the wine from the Sacrament at Easter and Allhallowmas, only to be small and skinny, sharp, and clever crookedly.  Not that her body was out of the straight (being too small for that perhaps), but that her wit was full of corners, jagged, and strange, and uncomfortable.  You never could tell what she might say next; and I like not that kind of women.  Now God forgive me for talking so of my own father’s daughter, and so much the more by reason that my father could not help it.  The right way is to face the matter, and then be sorry for every one.  My mother fell grievously on a slide, which John Fry had made nigh the apple-room door, and hidden with straw from the stable, to cover his own great idleness.  My father laid John’s nose on the ice, and kept him warm in spite of it; but it was too late for Eliza.  She was born next day with more mind than body—­the worst thing that can befall a man.

But Annie, my other sister, was now a fine fair girl, beautiful to behold.  I could look at her by the fireside, for an hour together, when I was not too sleepy, and think of my dear father.  And she would do the same thing by me, only wait the between of the blazes.  Her hair was done up in a knot behind, but some would fall over her shoulders; and the dancing of the light was sweet to see through a man’s eyelashes.  There never was a face that showed the light or the shadow of feeling, as if the heart were sun to it, more than our dear Annie’s did.  To look at her carefully, you might think that she was not dwelling on anything; and then she would know you were looking at her, and those eyes would tell all about it.  God knows that I try to be simple enough, to keep to His meaning in me, and not make the worst of His children.  Yet often have I been put to shame, and ready to bite my tongue off, after speaking amiss of anybody, and letting out my littleness, when suddenly mine eyes have met the pure soft gaze of Annie.