Three tall Lombardy poplar-trees stood in a row on the road line, and their long shadows, like the shadows of giant men, fell athwart the gray unpainted house and the broad grassy yard. At the south of the house was a flower bed of pinks and honeysuckles and thyme, and also a vegetable garden. Beyond that were three beehives in a row, with little black clouds of bees around them. Lydia carded assiduously, and never looked up. Her long black lashes lay against her pink cheeks, her full lips were half-smiling, as if she were saying some pleasant thing to herself. Lydia wore her black hair in a braided knot at the back of her head; in front she combed it smoothly down over her ears, then looped it up behind them in two clusters of soft curls. Her flowered chintz gown was cut low in the neck, and she wore a string of gold beads around her long white throat. Lydia sat very erect as she carded; her shoulders never wavered with the clapping motion of her hands; she even sat well forward in her chair, and did not come in contact with its straight back. Lydia Hersey was noted for the majesty of her carriage as well as her beauty, and was talked of as far as Boston. Young men had been known to come from other villages and walk past her house on the chance of seeing her at a window, although they dared not address her, nor do more than halt and stand for a second with their hats raised like school-boys before the parson or the squire, and that might have been accounted poor reward for a long journey. But there were for these New-Englanders no great pictures by old masters and no famous statues, and Lydia Hersey’s beautiful living face, set like a jewel for a moment in a window of the gray old Hersey house, served them instead. The young Abington men, the North Bridgewater men, and the Canton men would go home with their love of beauty all aflame, and never forget Lydia’s face in the window; indeed, it would turn towards them like a portrait, whichever way they moved, through their whole lives. Years afterwards, when these admirers were old men and heard some young beauty praised, they would look scornful and say, “You ought to have seen Lydia Hersey, of East Bridgewater.” A bumblebee flew with a loud buzz past Lydia’s head, and she started a little. He flew straight into the open window of the keeping-room. “That’s a sign of company,” she thought, and she thought also complacently how nicely the house was set in order, and she did not care who came.