go and show herself, and coquet in her lace and gewgaws with men old
enough to be her father, and loose enough to find her premature airs and
graces a fine joke indeed. She ruled them all with her temper and her
shrewish will. She would have her way in all things, or there should be
no sport with her, and she would sing no songs for them, but would flout
them bitterly, and sit in a great chair with her black brows drawn down,
and her whole small person breathing rancour and disdain.

Sir Jeoffry, who had bullied his wife, had now the pleasurable experience
of being henpecked by his daughter; for so, indeed, he was. Miss ruled
him with a rod of iron, and wielded her weapon with such skill that
before a year had elapsed he obeyed her as the servants below stairs had
done in her infancy. She had no fear of his great oaths, for she
possessed a strangely varied stock of her own upon which she could always
draw, and her voice being more shrill than his, if not of such bigness,
her ear-piercing shrieks and indomitable perseverance always proved too
much for him in the end. It must be admitted likewise that her violence
of temper and power of will were somewhat beyond his own, notwithstanding
her tender years and his reputation. In fact, he found himself obliged
to observe this, and finally made something of a merit and joke of it.

"There is no managing of the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man
nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass,
she would die shrieking hell at me and defiance."

If one admits the truth, it must be owned that if she had not had
bestowed upon her by nature gifts of beauty and vivacity so
extraordinary, and had been cursed with a thousandth part of the
vixenishness she displayed every day of her life, he would have broken
every bone in her carcass without a scruple or a qualm. But her beauty
seemed but to grow with every hour that passed, and it was by exceeding
good fortune exactly the fashion of beauty which he admired the most.
When she attained her tenth year she was as tall as a fine boy of twelve,
and of such a shape and carriage as young Diana herself might have
envied. Her limbs were long, and most divinely moulded, and of a
strength that caused admiration and amazement in all beholders. Her
father taught her to follow him in the hunting-field, and when she
appeared upon her horse, clad in her little breeches and top-boots and
scarlet coat, child th