creature as she
turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings
nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the
person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to
the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she
have cared to have ear-rings rather than anything else? And I know that
she had longed for ear-rings from among all the ornaments she could
imagine.

"Little, little ears!" Arthur had said, pretending to pinch them one
evening, as Hetty sat beside him on the grass without her hat. "I wish I
had some pretty ear-rings!" she said in a moment, almost before she knew
what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her lips, it WOULD flutter
past them at the slightest breath. And the next day--it was only last
week--Arthur had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That
little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of
childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had
wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Hetty
unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed back
their new delight into his.

No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the
ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them
to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears--only for one moment, to
see how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against
the wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a
listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings
as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be
made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the
tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps
water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little
round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Hetty
must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman,
with a woman's destiny before her--a woman spinning in young ignorance a
light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and
press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once
her fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human
anguish.

But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle
and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them
up. Some day