apple of my eye,’ said the squire, adding with characteristic scrupulousness, ‘if apple’s female.’  I asked her whether she had heard from Temple latterly.  ‘No; dear little fellow!’ cried she, and I saw in a twinkling what it was that the squire liked in her, and liked it too.  I caught sight of myself, as through a rift of cloud, trotting home from the hunt to a glad, frank, unpretending mate, with just enough of understanding to look up to mine.  For a second or so it was pleasing, as a glance out of his library across hill and dale will be to a strained student.  Our familiarity sanctioned a comment on the growth of her daughter-of-the-regiment moustache, the faintest conceivable suggestion of a shadow on her soft upper lip, which a poet might have feigned to have fallen from her dark thick eyebrows.

‘Why, you don’t mean to say, Hal, it’s not to your taste?’ said the squire.

‘No,’ said I, turning an eye on my aunt Dorothy, ’I’ve loved it all my life.’

The squire stared at me to make sure of this, muttered that it was to his mind a beauty, and that it was nothing more on Janet’s lip than down on a flower, bloom on a plum.  The poetical comparisons had the effect of causing me to examine her critically.  She did not raise a spark of poetical sentiment in my bosom.  She had grown a tall young woman, firmly built, light of motion, graceful perhaps; but it was not the grace of grace:  the grace of simplicity, rather.  She talked vivaciously and frankly, and gave (to friends) her whole eyes and a fine animation in talking; and her voice was a delight to friends; there was always the full ring of Janet in it, and music also.  She still lifted her lip when she expressed contempt or dislike of persons; nor was she cured of her trick of frowning.  She was as ready as ever to be flattered; that was evident.  My grandfather’s praise of her she received with a rewarding look back of kindness; she was not discomposed by flattery, and threw herself into no postures, nor blushed very deeply.  ’Thank you for perceiving my merits,’ she seemed to say; and to be just I should add that one could fancy her saying, you see them because you love me.  She wore her hair in a plain knot, peculiarly neatly rounded away from the temples, which sometimes gave to a face not aquiline a look of swiftness.  The face was mobile, various, not at all suggestive of bad temper, in spite of her frowns.  The profile of it was less assuring than the front, because of the dark eyebrows’ extension and the occasional frown, but that was not shared by the mouth, which was, I admitted to myself, a charming bow, running to a length at the corners like her eyebrows, quick with smiles.  The corners of the mouth would often be in movement, setting dimples at work in her cheek, while the brows remained fixed, and thus at times a tender meditative air was given her that I could not think her own.  Upon what could she possibly reflect?  She had not a care, she had no education, she could hardly boast an idea—­two at a time I was sure she never had entertained.  The sort of wife for a fox-hunting lord, I summed up, and hoped he would be a good fellow.