We were proud of Jessie in this attitude, which made her father call her “Brynhild” or “Boadicea.” When she was with her mother she was “Cordelia:” when she nursed a cat or fed the pigeons she was “Phyllis,” by which I suppose he meant to express her gentleness. From that Saturday night I admired everything about her, down to her bright teeth, which were a little uneven, and thus gave a touch of country homeliness to her beauty. Very few girls came to Abercorran House to see Jessie, partly because she was impatient of very girlish girls, partly because they could not get on with her brothers. And so, with all her sweet temper--and violence that came like a tenth wave--she was rather alone; just as her face dropped back to gravity so completely after laughter, so I think she returned to solitude very easily after her romps. Was it the shadow of London upon her, or of her mother’s room? She went back to Wales too seldom, and as for other holidays, the charming sophisticated home-counties were nothing to the Morgans, nor the seaside resorts. Jessie should have had a purer air, where perhaps she would never have sung the song beginning, “O the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird,” and ending with the chorus: “Oh, the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies: She bringeth good tidings, she telleth no lies.” Sometimes she was willing to sing all three verses and repeat the first to make a fourth and to please herself: “Oh, the cuckoo, she’s a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies: She bringeth good tidings, she telleth no lies: She sucketh sweet flowers, for to keep her voice clear; And the more she singeth cuckoo, the summer draweth near.” When she came to those last two lines I looked at her very hard, inspired by the thought that it was she had sucked dew out of the white flowers of April, the cuckoo-flower, the stitchwort, the blackthorn, and the first may, to make her voice clear and her lips sweet. While she sang it once Mr Stodham--a clerk somewhere who had seen a naked Dryad--bent his head a little to one side, perfectly motionless, the eyes and lips puckered to a perfect attention, at once eager and passive, so that I think the melody ran through all his nerves and his veins, as I am sure he was inviting it to do. I heard him telling Mr Morgan afterwards that he wanted to cry, but could not, it was not in his family.