curls approvingly; whereupon she always curtseyed. For she never tried
to look away when honest people gazed at her; and even in the court-yard
she would come and help to take your saddle, and tell (without your
asking her) what there was for dinner.

And afterwards she grew up to be a very comely maiden, tall, and with a
well-built neck, and very fair white shoulders, under a bright cloud
of curling hair. Alas! poor Annie, like most of the gentle maidens--but
tush, I am not come to that yet; and for the present she seemed to me
little to look at, after the beauty of Lorna Doone.




CHAPTER X

A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

[Illustration: 077.jpg Illustrated Capital]

It happened upon a November evening (when I was about fifteen years old,
and out-growing my strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned
thirteen, and a deal of rain having fallen, and all the troughs in the
yard being flooded, and the bark from the wood-ricks washed down the
gutters, and even our water-shoot going brown) that the ducks in the
court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching off to their pen,
one behind another. Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be
the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the
fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten
white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their