black eyes. She wore a
black gown, cut low in the neck, a white kerchief, and bassomy (or
purplish) bows in her cap as the child had stated. Just at present
she was busy with a spade, and showed an ankle passing neat for her
age, as she turned up the neglected mould. When the men plucked up
gallantry enough to offer their services, she smiled and thanked them
in broken English, but said that her small forces would serve.

So they went back to their wives; and their wives, recollecting that
the cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson
Morth, "than whom," as the tablet to his memory relates, "none was
better to castigate the manners of the age." He was a burly,
hard-riding ruffian, and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben
in Launceston streets is yet told on the countryside.

Parson Morth wanted to know if he couldn't let his cottage to an
invalid lady and her sister without consulting every wash-mouth in
the parish.

"Aw, so there's two!" said one of them, nodding her head. "But tell
us, Parson dear, ef 'tes fitty for two unmated women to come
trapesing down in a po'shay at dead o' night, when all modest flesh
be in their bed-gowns?"

Upon this the Parson's language became grossly indelicate, after the
fashion of those days. He closed his peroration by slamming the
front door on his visitors; and they went down the hill "blushing"
(as they said) "all over, at his intimate words."

So nothing more was known of the strangers. But it was noticed that
Parson Morth, when he passed the cottage on his way to meet or
market, would pull up his mare, and, if the outlandish lady were
working in the garden, would doff his hat respectfully.

"_Bon jour, Mdmzelle Henriette_"--this was all the French the Parson
knew. And the lady would smile back and answer in English.

"Good-morning, Parson Morth."

"And Mamzelle Lucille?"

"Ah, just the same, my God! All the day stare--stare. If you had
known her before!--so be-eautiful, so gifted, _si bien elevee!_
It is an affliction: but I think she loves the flowers."

And the Parson rode on with a lump in his throat.

So two years passed, during which Mademoiselle Henriette tilled her
garden and turned it into a paradise. There were white roses on the
south wall, and in the beds mignonette and boy's-love, pansies,
carnations, gillyflowers, sweet-williams, and flaming great
hollyhocks; above all, the yellow monkey-blossoms that throve so we