he world," old
Posset quavered. "She hath the voice of a six-months boy. It cracks my
very ears. Hush thee, then, thou little wild cat."

This was but the beginning. From the first she grew apace, and in a few
months was a bouncing infant, with a strong back, and a power to make
herself heard such as had not before appeared in the family. When she
desired a thing, she yelled and roared with such a vigour as left no
peace for any creature about her until she was humoured, and this being
the case, rather than have their conversation and love-making put a stop
to, the servants gave her her way. In this they but followed the example
of their betters, of whom we know that it is not to the most virtuous
they submit or to the most learned, but to those who, being crossed, can
conduct themselves in a manner so disagreeable, shrewish or violent, that
life is a burden until they have their will. This the child Clorinda had
the infant wit to discover early, and having once discovered it, she
never ceased to take advantage of her knowledge. Having found in the
days when her one desire was pap, that she had but to roar lustily enough
to find it beside her in her porringer, she tried the game upon all other
occasions. When she had reached but a twelvemonth, she stood stoutly
upon her little feet, and beat her sisters to gain their playthings, and
her nurse for wanting to change her smock. She was so easily thrown into
furies, and so raged and stamped in her baby way that she was a sight to
behold, and the men-servants found amusement in badgering her. To set
Mistress Clorinda in their midst on a winter's night when they were dull,
and to torment her until her little face grew scarlet with the blood
which flew up into it, and she ran from one to the other beating them and
screaming like a young spitfire, was among them a favourite
entertainment.

"Ifackens!" said the butler one night, "but she is as like Sir Jeoffry in
her temper as one pea is like another. Ay, but she grows blood red just
as he does, and curses in her little way as he does in man's words among
his hounds in their kennel."

"And she will be of his build, too," said the housekeeper. "What mishap
changed her to a maid instead of a boy, I know not. She would have made
a strapping heir. She has the thigh and shoulders of a handsome
man-child at this hour, and she is not three years old."

"Sir Jeoffry missed his mark when he called her an ugly brat," sai