So possibly it has come to pass, that love has clothed little Mistress Ruth about with a beauty strangers might not be able to see. For you, the gray eyes so frankly meeting yours from beneath their long dark lashes and the well-defined brows might be too grave and thoughtful, though indeed, quite to decide, you should wait till she speaks. The tip of that little nose, to please your classical notions, ought not possibly to assert its right of way as it does, in just the slightest of upward directions. Neither is her mouth of the "button-hole" or "two-cherries-on-one-stalk" order; though it is a handsome, sweet-tempered mouth enough, with its resolute yet mobile curves when the red lips part to speak or to smile. Then again, her hair is neither sunny nor raven-black, as it behoves heroines' hair to be; but then she did not look to be a heroine, this Hertfordshire maltster's daughter. Nor was it of the tawny red the fine ladies of those Merry Monarch days delighted to dye their locks; but just of an ordinary middling shade of brown, with the faint ripple of a natural curl on her white forehead, and something of the sort which defied the silken snood, and saucily insisted on straying at pleasure about the nape of her slender neck. As to her hands, they were as well moulded and serviceable a little pair as you might wish to see; and if they were a trifle browner than modish maidens might have considered altogether the thing, the sun, and the churn, and the delicious home-made bread, and such like things, were possibly responsible; but an ocean of milk of roses itself, could not have been so soft and sweet as their touch, if you needed help from them in any pain or trouble befalling you. Doubtless as pretty a pair of feet as hers were to be found in the shire; but if Cinderella's own were smaller--IF they were--they could not have been prettier; and let her wear what she might, those partial people who knew her, declared that Ruth Rumbold's clothes always became her. Be that as it may, very certain it is that that kirtle of flowered chintz looped above the pink-and-white striped tiffany petticoat marvellously becomes her trim figure, and matches bravely with the red and snow white hawthorn wreath crowning her shapely head; and never, declare her loving lieges, was fairer Queen of May than this Queen Ruth. [Sidenote: The master of Nether Hall.]