Diamond’s hoofs made a crash on the small pebbles as he turned back to the road. Fanny had so much to tell and to show, about how long they had been expecting him, how they had wished for him, and what feats they had performed without him, that James dismounted to admire the plumpness of the char, and to verify Wallace’s boast that that fat old fellow that he had just caught weighed two pounds. It was not long before James was trying whether he could not draw one which would weigh two pounds and an ounce. CHAPTER IV. CLERICAL RECREATIONS. James was indefatigable in his exertions to get his sister suited with a horse. He was at the Paddock every day for a fortnight; and he would not be satisfied without Fanny’s going there too, to try one and another horse in the fields behind the stables. Sometimes the girls came out, curtseying to the young lady, and giving an opinion when asked. Fanny delighted her brother by a spontaneous exclamation about their beauty, the first time she saw them: but she presently vexed him by being extremely amused at their perfect likeness. If it had not been that a young greyhound was for ever in attendance upon one, Fanny could not have pretended to distinguish them. James told her she had no eyes. “They are all stupid alike,” muttered he. “That greyhound has more sense than any of them. It is only three days since I gave him to her, and _he_ never mistakes Anne for her, in the dusk or in the daylight. To talk of their eyes being alike! as if colour was everything in eyes! Anne’s are pretty enough; but they never had such a light in them as Sarah’s. And then the blush——I thought Fanny had been fond enough of her garden to know the difference between a folded convolvulus (which is a graceful thing enough in its way) and one that is glowing in dew when the sun has just expanded it.” A very short dialogue showed Fanny which it was that James preferred. It would not have been necessary, if she had known how Sarah came by the greyhound. “What a pretty creature Anne is!” observed Fanny, when, with a smile, Anne opened the gate, for her horse to pass into the field. “Beautiful,” cried James, with enthusiasm. “O, she is a beautiful creature!” “You think her the prettiest,—you like her the best of the two?” “No,” said he, with sudden quietness; “I admire Sarah the most.” This made Fanny turn her head to take another look; but it was Anne who gazed after them. Sarah was busy with her dog Fido. James was not wrong in his observations on eyes. A new light had fixed itself in Sarah’s; and if he did not perceive something of the same kind in Anne’s, it was perhaps owing to the light being often troubled, and sometimes dimmed. The serenity of both was gone. Sarah did not wish it back again. Anne did; every hour between rising and rest.