Ah! through how many years that steep street, with its clean, sunny stones, its irregular line of quaint old buildings, and the distant glimpse of big trees within palings into which it passed at the top, where the town touched the outskirts of some gentleman's place, has remained on my mind like a picture! Getting a little vague after a few years, and then perhaps a little altered, as fancy almost involuntarily supplied the defects of memory; but still that steep street, that tinsmith's shop--_the_ features of Oakford!
I have since thought that Jemima must have had some special attraction to the tinsmith's, her errands there were so many, and took so much time. This occasion may be divided into three distinct periods. During the first, I waited in that state of vacant patience whereby one endures other people's shopping. During the second, I walked round all the cans, pans, colanders, and graters, and took a fancy to a tin mug. It was neither so valuable nor so handsome as the silver mug with dragon handles given me by my Indian godfather, but it was a novelty. When I looked closer, however, I found that it was marked, in plain figures, fourpence, which at that time was beyond my means; so I walked to the door, that I might solace the third period by looking out into the street. As I looked, there came down the hill a fine, large, sleek donkey, led by an old man-servant, and having on its back what is called a Spanish saddle, in which two little girls sat side by side, the whole party jogging quietly along at a foot's pace in the sunshine. I may say here that my experience of little girls had been almost entirely confined to my cousins, and that I was so overwhelmed and impressed by the loveliness of these two children, and by their quaint, queenly little ways, that time has not dimmed one line in the picture that they then made upon my mind. I can see them now as clearly as I saw them then, as I stood at the tinsmith's door in the High Street of Oakford--let me see, how many years ago? ("Never mind," says my wife; "go on with the story, my dear," and I go on.)
The child who looked the older, but was, as I afterwards discovered, the younger of the two, was also the less pretty. And yet she had a sweet little face, hair like spun gold, and blue-grey eyes with dark lashes. She wore a grey frock of some warm material, below which peeped her indoors dress of blue. The outer coat had a quaint cape like a coachman's, which was relieved by a broad white crimped frill round her throat. Her legs were cased in knitted gaiters of white wool, and her hands in the most comical miniatures of gloves. On her fairy head she wore a large bonnet of grey beaver, with a frill inside. (My wife explains that it was a "cap-front," adorned with little bunches of ribbon, and having a cap attached to it, the whole being put on separately before the bonnet. Details which seem to amuse my little daughters, and to have less interest for my sons.) But it was her sister who shone on my young eyes like a fairy vision. She looked too delicate, too brilliant, too utterly lovely, for anywhere but fairy-land. She ought to have been kept in tissue-paper, like the loveliest of wax dolls. Her hair was the true flaxen, the very fairest of the fair. The purity and vividness of the tints of red and white in her face I have never seen equalled. Her eyes were of speedwell blue, and looked as if they were meant to be always more or less brimming with tears. To say the truth, her face had not half the character which gave force to that of the other little damsel, but a certain helplessness about it gave it a peculiar charm. She was dressed exactly like the other, with one exception; her bonnet was of white beaver, and she became it like a queen.