by shame: and woe to the stranger who fancied that her entrance into
that noisy den gave him a right to say a rough word to the fair girl!
The maidens, instead of envying her beauty, made her the confidant of
all their loves; for though many a man would gladly have married her,
to woo her was more than any dared; and Gentleman Jan himself, the
rightful bully of the quay, as being the handsomest and biggest
man for many a mile, beside owning a tidy trawler and two good
mackerel-boats, had said openly, that if any man had a right to her,
he supposed he had; but that he should as soon think of asking her to
marry him, as of asking the moon.

But it was in the school, in the duty which lay nearest to her, that
Grace's inward loveliness shone most lovely. Whatever dark cloud of
melancholy lay upon her own heart, she took care that it should never
overshadow one of those young innocents, whom she taught by love and
ruled by love, always tender, always cheerful, even gay and playful;
punishing, when she rarely punished, with tears and kisses. To make
them as happy as she could in a world where there was nothing but
temptation, and disappointment, and misery; to make them "fit for
heaven," and then to pray that they might go thither as speedily
as possible, this had been her work for now seven years; and that
Manichaeism which has driven darker and harder natures to destroy
young children, that they might go straight to bliss, took in her the
form of outpourings of gratitude (when the first natural tears were
dried), as often as one of her little lambs was "delivered out of the
miseries of this sinful world." But as long as they were in the
world, she was their guardian angel; and there was hardly a mother in
Aberalva who did not confess her debt to Grace, not merely for her
children's scholarship, but for their characters.