But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty
Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached
to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the
utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is--though she doesn't
know it--that there's so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about
her. Such a woman as that brings with her 'airs from heaven' that the
coarsest fellow is not insensible to."
"Here's a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a
prize, I suppose," said Mr. Gawaine. "She must be one of the racers in
the sacks, who had set off before we came."
The "bit of womanhood" was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise
Chad's Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone
an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly
body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken
to her ear-rings again since Dinah's departure, and was otherwise decked
out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have
looked into poor Bessy's heart would have seen a striking resemblance
between her little hopes and anxieties and Hetty's. The advantage,
perhaps, would have been on Bessy's side in the matter of feeling.
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