THE SHEPHERD OF THE DOWNS 119 



house, and made even the most godless anxious to 

 seem better than they were in her loved eyes. 



Of the wife's sister, whom I have mentioned, one 

 slight incident which impressed me at the moment 

 remains to be told. She was utterly unlike her 

 sister in her high bright colour, fluffy golden brown 

 hair, blue-grey eyes, and perfect aquiline features. 

 One evening she came in from the orchard, where 

 she had been having a game of romps with the 

 little children on the grass before putting them to 

 bed, and to amuse them had pulled some slender 

 sprays of small-leafed ivy and sewn them round the 

 band of her cloth cap. Forgetting the garland, and 

 flushed and merry, she came in and sat down oppo- 

 site the west window, through which the level rays 

 of the setting sun streamed full on her face. Look-' 

 ing at it, as it appeared in profile in that dim interior 

 — the classical lines of the face and sunlit hair and 

 ivy crown — the effect was as of something quite 

 familiar and yet novel and never previously seen. 

 It was in fact a face and head that we are all 

 familiar with in art, now for the first time in my 

 experience seen alive. I vaguely remembered, too, 

 that once upon a time the old Romans had possessed 

 an important settlement close by, perhaps at that 

 very spot ; and the thought came to me that perhaps 

 long long centuries ago, one summer evening, a Roman 

 maiden of nineteen came in from a merry game with 

 her married sister's little ones on the grass, her shin- 



