It is a beauty
like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to
engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the
state of mind into which it throws you....It is of little use for me to
tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played
about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness
under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back
under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate
rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of
little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her
pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-colored stuff
bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a
thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such
charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes
lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty
of her foot and ankle--of little use unless you have seen a woman who
affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you
might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least
resemble that distracting kitten-like maiden.
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