of the consequences;
but set all hands on to thresh the corn, ere the Doones could come and
burn the ricks. For I knew that they could not come yet, inasmuch as
even a forest pony could not traverse the country, much less the heavy
horses needed to carry such men as they were. And hundreds of the forest
ponies died in this hard weather, some being buried in the snow, and
more of them starved for want of grass.

Going through this state of things, and laying down the law about
it (subject to correction), I very soon persuaded Lorna that for the
present she was safe, and (which made her still more happy) that she was
not only welcome, but as gladdening to our eyes as the flowers of May.
Of course, so far as regarded myself, this was not a hundredth part of
the real truth; and even as regarded others, I might have said it ten
times over. For Lorna had so won them all, by her kind and gentle ways,
and her mode of hearkening to everybody's trouble, and replying without
words, as well as by her beauty, and simple grace of all things, that
I could almost wish sometimes the rest would leave her more to me. But
mother could not do enough; and Annie almost worshipped her; and even
Lizzie could not keep her bitterness towards her; especially when she
found that Lorna knew as much of books as need be.

As for John Fry, and Betty, and Molly, they were a perfect plague when
Lorna came into the kitchen. For betwixt their curiosity to see a
live Doone in the flesh (when certain not to eat them), and their high
respect for birth (with or without honesty), and their intense desire to
know all about Master John's sweetheart (dropped, as they said, from the
snow-clouds), and most of all their admiration of a beauty such as never
even their angels could have seen--betwixt and between all this, I say,
there was no getting the dinner cooked, with Lorna in the kitchen.

And the worst of it was that Lorna took the strangest of all strange
fancies for this very kitchen; and it was hard to keep her out of it.
Not that she had any special bent for cooking, as our Annie had; rather
indeed the contrary, for she liked to have her food ready cooked; but
that she loved the look of the place, and the cheerful fire burning, and
the racks of bacon to be seen, and the richness, and the homeliness, and
the pleasant smell of everything. And who knows but what she may have
liked (as the very best of maidens do) to be admired, now and then,
between the times