And yet she looked so dimpled,
so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the
hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to
suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose
and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs.
Poyser said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid
face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown
earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies
hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty, so it is not surprising that
Mrs. Poyser, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation,
should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected
from Hetty in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had
sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband.
"She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and
spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was
dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even
when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear
cherub! And we found her wi' her little shoes stuck i' the mud an'
crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit.
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