,
on which it was her habit to clasp tightly her little outstretched
fingers as she sat listening to you. Of listeners she was the very
best, for she would always be saying a word or two, just to help
you,--the best word that could be spoken, and then again she would
be hanging on your lips. There are listeners who show by their mode
of listening that they listen as a duty,--not because they are
interested. Lucy Morris was not such a one. She would take up your
subject, whatever it was, and make it her own. There was forward just
then a question as to whether the Sawab of Mygawb should have twenty
millions of rupees paid to him and be placed upon a throne, or
whether he should be kept in prison all his life. The British world
generally could not be made to interest itself about the Sawab, but
Lucy positively mastered the subject, and almost got Lord Fawn into a
difficulty by persuading him to stand up against his chief on behalf
of the injured prince.

What else can be said of her face or personal appearance that will
interest a reader? When she smiled, there was the daintiest little
dimple on her cheek. And when she laughed, that little nose, which
was not as well-shaped a nose as it might have been, would almost
change its shape and cock itself up in its mirth. Her hands were very
thin and long, and so were her feet,--by no means models as were
those of her friend Lady Eustace. She was a little, thin, quick,
graceful creature, whom it was impossible that you should see without
wishing to have near you. A most unselfish little creature she was,
but one who had a well-formed idea of her own identity. She was quite
resolved to be somebody among her fellow-creatures,--not somebody
in the way of marrying a lord or a rich man, or somebody in the way
of being a beauty, or somebody as a wit; but somebody as having a
purpose and a use in life. She was the humblest little thing in
the world in regard to any possible putting of herself forward or
needful putting of herself back; and yet, to herself, nobody was her
superior. What she had was her own, whether it was the old grey silk
dress which she had bought with the money she had earned, or the wit
which nature had given her. And Lord Fawn's title was his own, and
Lady Fawn's rank her own. She coveted no man's possessions,--and no
woman's; but she was minded to hold by her own. Of present advantages
or disadvantages,--whether she had the one or suffered from the
other,--she t