d?" questioned the voice from below.

Now Cherry was undeniably idling away the morning hours by looking
out of her window at the lively scene below; and perhaps it was
scarce wonderful that the sights and sounds without attracted her.
It was a sunny November morning, and the sun was shining quite
hotly; for the soft wind from the south was blowing--it had
suddenly veered round in the night--and all nature seemed to be
rejoicing in the change. The river ran sparkling on its way to the
sea; the barges and wherries, and larger craft that anchored in the
stream or plied their way up and down, gave animation and
brightness to the great water way; whilst the old bridge, with its
quaint-timbered houses with their projecting upper stories, its
shops with their swinging signs, and noisy apprentices crying their
masters' wares or playing or quarrelling in the open street, and
its throngs of passers by, from the blind beggar to the gay court
gallant, provided a shifting and endless panorama of entertainment
to the onlooker, which pretty Mistress Cherry certainly
appreciated, if no one else in that grave Puritan household did the
like. But possibly she thought that her aunt's question must not be
too literally answered, for she hastily skipped across the panelled
chamber, seized her distaff, and answered meekly;

"I am about to spin, aunt."

"Humph!" the answer sounded more like a grunt than anything else,
and warned Cherry that Mistress Susan, her father's sister, who had
ruled his household for the past ten years, since the death of his
wife, was in no very amiable temper.

"I know what that means. Thy spinning is a fine excuse for idling
away thy time in the parlour, when thou mightest be learning
housewifery below. Much flax thou spinnest when I am not by to
watch! It is a pity thou wert not a fine lady born!"

Cherry certainly was decidedly of this opinion herself, albeit she
would not have dared to say as much. She liked soft raiment, bright
colours, dainty ways, and pretty speeches. Looking down from her
window upon the passers by, it was her favourite pastime to fancy
herself one of the hooped and powdered and gorgeously-apparelled
ladies, with their monstrous farthingales, their stiff petticoats,
their fans, their patches, and their saucy, coquettish ways to the
gentlemen in their train. All this bedizenment, which had by no
means died out with the death of a Queen who had loved and
encouraged it, was dear to the e