"My lady sweet, arise!
My lady sweet, arise
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise;
Arise, arise."
It was morning, and Charmian was singing. The pure, rich notes
floated in at my open lattice, and I heard the clatter of her
pail as she went to fetch water from the brook. Wherefore I
presently stepped out into the sunshine, my coat and neckcloth
across my arm, to plunge my head and face into the brook, and
carry back the heavy bucket for her, as was my custom.
Being come to the brook I found the brimming bucket, sure enough,
but no Charmian. I was looking about wonderingly, when she began
to sing again, and, guided by this, I espied her kneeling beside
the stream.
The water ran deep and very still, just here, overhung by ash and
alder and willow, whose slender, curving branches formed a leafy
bower wherein she half knelt, half sat, bending over to regard
herself in the placid water. For a long moment she remained
thus, studying her reflection intently in this crystal mirror,
and little by little her song died away. Then she put up her
hands and began to rearrange her hair with swift, dexterous
fingers, apostrophizing her watery image the while, in this wise: "My dear, you are growing positively apple-cheeked--I vow you
are! your enemies might almost call you strapping--alack! And
then your complexion, my dear, your adorable complexion!" she
went on, with a rueful shake of her head, "you are as brown as a
gipsy--not that you need go breaking your heart over it--for,
between you and me, my dear, I think it rather improves you; the
pity of it is that you have no one to appreciate you properly--to
render to your charms the homage they deserve, no one--not a soul,
my dear; your hermit, bless you! can see, or think, of nothing
that exists out of a book--which, between you and me and the
bucket yonder, is perhaps just as well--and yet--heigho! To be
so lovely and so forlorn! indeed, I could shed tears for you if
it would not make your eyelids swell and your classic nose
turn red."
Here she sighed again, and, taking a tendril of hair between her
fingers, transformed it, very cleverly, into a small curl.
"Yes, your tan certainly becomes you, my dear," she went on,
nodding to her reflection; "not that he will ever notice--dear
heart, no! were you suddenly to turn as black as a Hottentot
--before his very eyes--he would go on serenely smoking his pipe,
and talk to you of Epictetus--heighho!" Sighing thus, she broke
off a spray of leaves and proceeded to twine them in among the
lustrous coils of her hair, bending over her reflection
meanwhile, and turning her head this way and that, to note the
effect.