The water ran deep and very still, just here, overhung by ash and alder and willow, whose slender, curving branches formed a leafy bower wherein she half knelt, half sat, bending over to regard herself in the placid water.  For a long moment she remained thus, studying her reflection intently in this crystal mirror, and little by little her song died away.  Then she put up her hands and began to rearrange her hair with swift, dexterous fingers, apostrophizing her watery image the while, in this wise: 

“My dear, you are growing positively apple-cheeked—­I vow you are! your enemies might almost call you strapping—­alack!  And then your complexion, my dear, your adorable complexion!” she went on, with a rueful shake of her head, “you are as brown as a gipsy—­not that you need go breaking your heart over it—­for, between you and me, my dear, I think it rather improves you; the pity of it is that you have no one to appreciate you properly—­to render to your charms the homage they deserve, no one—­not a soul, my dear; your hermit, bless you! can see, or think, of nothing that exists out of a book—­which, between you and me and the bucket yonder, is perhaps just as well—­and yet—­heigho!  To be so lovely and so forlorn! indeed, I could shed tears for you if it would not make your eyelids swell and your classic nose turn red.”

Here she sighed again, and, taking a tendril of hair between her fingers, transformed it, very cleverly, into a small curl.

“Yes, your tan certainly becomes you, my dear,” she went on, nodding to her reflection; “not that he will ever notice—­dear heart, no! were you suddenly to turn as black as a Hottentot —­before his very eyes—­he would go on serenely smoking his pipe, and talk to you of Epictetus—­heighho!” Sighing thus, she broke off a spray of leaves and proceeded to twine them in among the lustrous coils of her hair, bending over her reflection meanwhile, and turning her head this way and that, to note the effect.

“Yes,” said she at last, nodding at her image with a satisfied air, “that touch of green sets off your gipsy complexion admirably, my dear—­I could positively kiss you—­I vow I could, and I am hard to please.  St. Anthony himself, meeting you alone in the desert, would, at least, have run away from you, and that would have been some tribute to your charms, but our philosopher will just glance at you with his slow, grave smile, and tell you, in his solemn, affable way—­that it is a very fine morning —­heigho!”

Here (somewhat late in the day, perhaps) perceiving that I was playing eavesdropper, I moved cautiously away, and taking up the pail, returned to the cottage.  I now filled the kettle and set it upon the fire, and proceeded to spread the cloth (a luxurious institution of Charmian’s, on which she insisted) and to lay out the breakfast things.  In the midst of which, however, chancing to fall into a reverie, I became oblivious of all things till roused by a step behind me, and, turning, beheld Charmian standing with the glory of the sun about her—­like the Spirit of Summer herself, broad of hip and shoulder, yet slender, and long of limb, all warmth and life, and long, soft curves from throat to ankle—­perfect with vigorous youth from the leaves that crowned her beauty to the foot that showed beneath her gown.