awed in Will Locke's presence.
Now here comes the sign of Dulcie's innate beauty of character. Had
Dulcie been a commonplace, coarse girl, she would have been wearied,
aggrieved, fairly disgusted by Will Locke in three days. But Dulcie was
brimfull of reverence, she was generous to the ends of her hair, she
liked to feel her heart in her mouth with admiration.

The truth of the matter was, Dulcie would have been fain to lift up Will
Locke's pencil as they pretend Caesar served Titian, to clean his
palette, gather flowers for him, busk them into a nosegay, preserve them
in pure water, and never steal the meanest for her own use. Will Locke
was her saint, Dulcie was quite ready to be absorbed in his beams. Well
for her if they did not scorch her, poor little moth!

Oh! Dulcie, Dulcie, your friends could not have thought it of you--not
even Clary, tolerably misled on her own account, would have believed you
serious in your enamourment, though you had gone down on your knees and
sworn it to them. It was nothing but the obliging humour of Mistress
Dulcie and the single-heartedness of the youth; still even in this mild
view of the case, if their friends had paid proper attention to them,
they would have counselled Dulcie to abide more securely by her chair
covers, and my simple man to stick more closely to his card or his
ivory, his hedges or his hurdles.

Sometimes, late as the season was, Will Locke and Dulcie went out
picking their steps in search of plants and animals, and it was
fortunate for Dulcie that she could pull her mohair gown through her
pocket-holes, and tuck her mob-cap under her chin beneath her hat, for
occasionally the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right
into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke
was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight,
neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant.
Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot
one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look
in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of
grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into
crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so
fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed
him. The strolls of these short autumn days were never barren of
interest and advantage to him. The man carried his treas