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"It an't there now," cried Catherine Alard.

She still sat her horse—astride, for she had not yet learned the new way of riding side-saddle. Her heavy skirts spread on the horse's flank, gathered thickly at her firm young waist. Above the waist her figure was almost as spare as a boy's, though there was a feminine fullness about the throat, rising sunburned above her snow-white partlet. She carried her head high, and as she wore no hat the sun had bronzed her face to the colour of dark honey. There was another contrast of white in her teeth; she had a large mouth, and showed them grandly. Her eyes were large too, and slightly prominent, giving her rather a wild look. Her hair should have been the same colour as her eyes, nut brown; but the sun had bleached it to a shade slightly fairer than her face.

"Poor girl! she hath no breasts," thought Maria Douce, strolling up on her lover's arm. She and Oliver Harman had been the only idle couple in the yard, sitting side by side on the trunk of a felled tree and watching their house go up. Now he had brought her to greet Mistress Catherine, of whom he had often spoken, but whom she had never seen.