lthough at the time I never dreamed it, and would have laughed if told
so. Annie was of a pleasing face, and very gentle manner, almost like
a lady some people said; but without any airs whatever, only trying to
give satisfaction. And if she failed, she would go and weep, without
letting any one know it, believing the fault to be all her own, when
mostly it was of others. But if she succeeded in pleasing you, it was
beautiful to see her smile, and stroke her soft chin in a way of her
own, which she always used when taking note how to do the right thing
again for you. And then her cheeks had a bright clear pink, and her eyes
were as blue as the sky in spring, and she stood as upright as a young
apple-tree, and no one could help but smile at her, and pat her brown
curls approvingly; whereupon she always curtseyed. For she never tried
to look away when honest people gazed at her; and even in the court-yard
she would come and help to take your saddle, and tell (without your
asking her) what there was for dinner.

And afterwards she grew up to be a very comely maiden, tall, and with a
well-built neck, and very fair white shoulders, under a bright cloud
of curling hair. Alas! poor Annie, like most of the gentle maidens--but
tush, I am not come to that yet; and for the present she seemed to me
little to look at, after the beauty of Lorna Doone.

CHAPTER X

A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

[Illustration: 077.jpg Illustrated Capital]

It happened upon a November evening (when I was about fifteen years old,
and out-growing my strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned
thirteen, and a deal of rain having fallen, and all the troughs in the
yard being flooded, and the bark from the wood-ricks washed down the
gutters, and even our water-shoot going brown) that the ducks in the
court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching off to their pen,
one behind another. Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be
the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the
fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten
white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their
colour, they all quacked very movingly. They pushed their gold-coloured
bills here and there (yet dirty, as gold is apt to be), and they jumped
on the triangles of their feet, and sounded out of their nostrils; and
some of the over-excited ones ran along low on the ground, quacking
grievously with