It has been noted that among Georgie's numerous and most assiduous admirers had been our friend Spunyarn. He had proposed to and been rejected by Georgie, but they still remained sworn friends. The two girls, the elder of whom was but twenty, her cousin being two years younger, presented a striking contrast. Georgie was a remarkably fine girl of the true English type. Three centuries of Warrenders, a family which began as yeomen, but soon took its place in the squirearchy of its county, had transmitted to Georgie that healthy type, that sound physique and that clear complexion, which is seen only in England; and even in England, only among healthy rustics, or the women of those families of the upper class who habitually pass the greater portion of the year out of London. Not that Georgie Warrender was a mere rustic beauty, as her taper hands and tiny feet showed. It takes a good foot to look well in a walking shoe, and even in the trying walking shoe Georgie's foot was unmistakably a good one. Her clear blue eyes were honest and sympathetic; Georgie Warrender looked every one straight in the face, she had evidently nothing to conceal, nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. The two girls had been carefully educated, the "ologies" having been wisely omitted. Georgie's magnificent chestnut bronze hair was her great attraction. It is needless to say that a lock of it was in Haggard's pocket-book, and that one of Haggard's raven curls was worn in Georgie's locket. The engagement was an open one. There was no self-consciousness about either of the parties. They were both evidently proud of it. Lucy was in many respects the exact opposite of her cousin. Lucy was a blonde; pretty, rather in the American style. But unlike most American beauties, far from being a mere skeleton in a skin, Lucy was a plump, well-developed specimen of the dreamy blonde. In type she much resembled the descriptions of Madame de Pompadour in her youth, before she had seen and captivated the great-grandson of the Grand Monarque. She was _mignonne_, no other word will express it. Her strong points were her pink and white complexion, her masses of wavy golden hair, her dark eyebrows and her magnificent hazel eyes; those dark dreamy eyes in which lurked latent fires. Young as she was, Lucy well knew how to use those eyes, and the way in which she gazed into the face of her cousin's betrothed seemed to detract nothing from his happiness. But in the same way she gazed into Spunyarn's face, it was not mere looking, it was "gazing." So she had gazed into the local general-practitioner's eyes when that poor young man looked at her tongue for the first time. It was Lucy Warrender's burning glance that had temporarily made the village doctor a discontented man, and had caused him to style his mid-day hashed mutton "muck."