No one who saw her swinging down the street, with her easy graceful carriage, a picture of radiant health and youth, with her vivacious small head--too small for her tall figure--set on a long stemlike throat rising from broad shoulders, her white and rather prominent teeth beneath her smiling short upper lip, and with those eyes, afterwards known as "Lilly eyes"--no one noticed the poverty of her dress, or suspected that those erect, delicately formed shoulders stooped for hours over a sewing-machine. Who could guess that this magnificent young frame, with the vigorous blood coursing visibly through it, prone to blushing and paling without cause, was reared on salt potatoes, stale bread, and bad sausage? The college students went mad about her, and the verses written to her in the lower school were legion. Lilly was not indifferent to their boyish homage. When she saw a batch of students coming towards her in the street, her eyes grew dim from self-consciousness. When they saluted her--for she had made their acquaintance on the ice--she felt dizzy and ready to sink through the earth to hide her blushes. But the sensation felt after such meetings was quite lovely. She recalled for hours with delight the face of the boy who had greeted her most courteously, or the one who had blushed as rosy red as herself. He was her chosen cavalier till next time, when she fell in love with another. In spite of her numerous admirers, her school-fellows did not torment her as much as might have been expected. There was an innocent defencelessness about her which made it impossible to be her enemy. If her satchel was hidden, she only said, "Please, don't," and when the girls perched her on top of the stove, she sat there and laughed, and in addition to letting them copy her English exercises she did their sums for them. The only trouble was jealousy among her bosom friends, who flew at each other's throats on her account, for she was fickle, and dropped old friendships to take up new with an ease which startled herself. She could not help responding to every fresh overture of friendliness made to her. With her masters, too, she was popular. The rebuke, "Lilly, you are dreaming again," that came sometimes from the dais, had no sting, but a tone of playfulness in it. And when she was a new-comer, and had sat at the end of the sixth row in Class I, B, more than one hand had stroked her brown head with paternal fondness. Her nickname was "Lilly of the Eyes." Her school-fellows declared such eyes were uncommon to the point of being uncanny. They had never seen eyes like them. Sometimes they called them "witch's eyes," sometimes "cat's eyes." They said their colour was violet, and some were sure she darkened the lids with a pencil. However that might be, to look at Lilly meant looking at her eyes, and not caring much to look at anything else.