were not the hardest epithets in the verdict of the
jury.

But Sally set the place to rights, and bade her father's old friends to
the funeral, and buried him with all the money that was in the house,
neither asking nor accepting aid from any; and with the poor pittance
that her severe conscience could afford her sorrow she procured some
cheap material of the doleful sort and went into the most unbecoming of
"full mourning." When she made her appearance in church,--which she
did, as usual, the very first Sunday after the funeral,--that plainest
of bonnets and straitest of black delaines, unadorned save by the
old-fashioned and dingy lace-cape, descended through many shifts of
saving from her long-ago-dead-and-gone mother, were so manifestly a
condescending concession to the conventionalities or superstitions of
Hendrik, and said so plainly, "This is for your 'decencies,'--it is all
that I can honestly spare, and more than you should demand,--my life is
mourning enough,"--that all the congregation bristled at the affront.
Henceforth Miss Wimple--no longer dear Sally, or even Miss Sally, but
sharp "Miss Wimple"--had that pew to herself.

Now I believe it was not generally known in Hendrik that Miss Wimple
had narrowly escaped being a very pretty girl. She was but just in her
nineteenth year when her father died. Her features were regular, her
expression lovely, her complexion, before trouble nipped the roses of
her cheeks, full of the country's freshness. She had tender eyes,
profoundly overshadowed by long, pensive lashes; in the sweet lines of
her very delicate mouth a trace of quiet pride was prettily blended
with thoughtfulness, and a just-forming smile that was always
melancholy. Her feet were little, and her hands were soft and white;
nor had toil and sorrow, and the weariness, and indifference to self,
that come of them, as yet impaired the symmetry of her well-turned
shape, or the elasticity of her free and graceful carriage. Her
deportment was frank and self-reliant, and her manners, though
reserved, far from awkward; her complete presence, indeed, compelled
consideration and invited confidence.

In her father's lifetime, she had sought, on occasions of unwonted
cheerfulness, to please him with certain charming tricks of attire; and
sometimes, with only a white rose-bud gleaming through the braided
shadows of her hair, lighted herself up as with a star; then, not a
carping churl, not an envious coquette in Hen