He is nice, kind, bald, timid, thin, and so colourless that he
can scarcely be discerned save in a strong light. When Mrs. Heaven goes
out into the orchard in search of him, I can hardly help calling from my
window, "Bear a trifle to the right, Mrs. Heaven--now to the left--just
in front of you now--if you put out your hands you will touch him."
Phoebe, aged seventeen, is the daughter of the house. She is virtuous,
industrious, conscientious, and singularly destitute of physical charm.
She is more than plain; she looks as if she had been planned without any
definite purpose in view, made of the wrong materials, been badly put
together, and never properly finished off; but "plain" after all is a
relative word. Many a plain girl has been married for her beauty; and
now and then a beauty, falling under a cold eye, has been thought plain.
Phoebe has her compensations, for she is beloved by, and reciprocates the
passion of, the Woodmancote carrier, Woodmucket being the English manner
of pronouncing the place of his abode. If he "carries" as energetically
for the great public as he fetches for Phoebe, then he must be a rising
and a prosperous man. He brings her daily, wild strawberries, cherries,
birds' nests, peacock feathers, sea-shells, green hazel-nuts, samples of
hens' food, or bouquets of wilted field flowers tied together tightly and
held with a large, moist, loving hand. He has fine curly hair of sandy
hue, which forms an aureole on his brow, and a reddish beard, which makes
another inverted aureole to match, round his chin.
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