of the Bronze
Age perhaps, and had now come out of their graves and put on modern
clothes. At all events I don't think a resident in Norfolk would
have much difficulty in picking out the portraits of some of his
fellow-villagers in Mr. Reed's Prehistoric Peeps.

The mother and her little ones were of the higher sub-type: they
had delicate skins, beautiful faces, clear musical voices. They were
Iberians in blood, but improved; purified and refined as by fire;
gentleized and spiritualized, and to the lower types down to the
aboriginals, as is the bright consummate flower to leaf and stem and
root.

Often and often we are teased and tantalized and mocked by that old
question:

Oh! so old--
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told--

of black and blue eyes; blue versus black and black versus blue, to put
it both ways. And by black we mean black with orange-brown lights in
it--the eye called tortoise-shell; and velvety browns with other browns,
also hazels. Blue includes all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, to
the palest blue of a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that is
almost white. Our preference for this or that colour is supposed to
depend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and association. I
believe it is something more, but I do find that we are very apt to be
swayed this way and that by the colour of the eyes of the people we meet
in life, according as they (the people) attract or repel us. The eyes of
the two little girls were black as polished black diamonds until looked
at closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown on which the black
pupils were seen distinctly; they were so lovely that I, predisposed to
prefer dark to light, felt that this question was now definitely settled
for me--that black was best. That irresistible charm, the flame-like
spirit which raised these two so much above the others--how could it go
with anything but the darkest eyes!

But no sooner was the question thus settled definitely and for all time,
to my very great satisfaction, than it was unsettled again. I do not
know how this came about; it may have been the sight of some small
child's blue eyes looking up at me, like the arch blue eyes of a kitten,
full of wonder at the world and everything in it;

"Where did you get those eyes so blue?"
"Out of the sky as I came through";

or it may have been the sight of a harebell; and perhap