ed my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so
indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with
suppressed laughter.

But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the
burlesque.

This creature, with no more education than a dairy-maid, I gradually
discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishment--a very sweet
voice, and wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing which quite
threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing.

Poor Milly, in all her life, had never read three books, and hated to
think of them. One, over which she was wont to yawn and sigh, and stare
fatiguedly for an hour every Sunday, by command of the Governor, was a
stout volume of sermons of the earlier school of George III., and a drier
collection you can't fancy. I don't think she read anything else. But she
had, notwithstanding, ten times the cleverness of half the circulating
library misses one meets with. Besides all this, I had a long sojourn
before me at Bartram-Haugh, and I had learned from Milly, as I had heard
before, what a perennial solitude it was, with a ludicrous fear of learning
Milly's preposterous dialect, and turning at last into something like her.
So I resolved to do all I could for her--teach her whatever I knew, if she
would allow me--and gradually, if possible, effect some civilising changes
in her language, and, as they term it in boarding-schools, her demeanour.

But I must pursue at present our first day's ramble in what was called
Bartram Chase. People can't go on eating blackberries always; so after a
while we resumed our walk along this pretty dell, which gradually expanded
into a wooded valley--level beneath and enclosed by irregular uplands,
receding, as it were, in mimic bays and harbours at some points, and
running out at others into broken promontories, ending in clumps of forest
trees.

Just where the glen which we had been traversing expanded into this broad,
but wooded valley, it was traversed by a high and close paling, which,
although it looked decayed, was still very strong.

In this there was a wooden gate, rudely but strongly constructed, and at
the side we were approaching stood a girl, who was leaning against the
post, with one arm resting on the top of the gate.

This girl was neither tall nor short--taller than she looked at a distance;
she had not a slight waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad
forehead, perpendicular but lo