ns were blowing half across
the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie
Fairfax's "own room" ever since she came to live in the doctor's house.
Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat. There were
assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been
rescued from the rectory-sale after her father's death; two miniatures,
not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents;
a faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House,
and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl, two
jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume of
roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his
widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their
contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl's collection. But
Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the
Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of Greece
and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given a fair
account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious
catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her
Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially
delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been
disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for
training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more
upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender
and careful mother.

And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so
early to the caprices of fortune? It is not to be pretended that she
reached the heroic standard. Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very
handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a girl's
bones might stand almost as well for a boy's, and there was, indeed,
something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie's air and aspect at this
date. She walked well, danced well, rode well--looked to the manner born
when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the doctor on his
second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie in his company
when he was going on a round, where, at certain points, rest and
refreshment were to be had for man and beast. Her figure had not the
promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned, and her
face was a capital letter of introduction. Feature