My word, if Jim Horscroft had asked me then if she were pretty or no, I should have known how to answer him! She was dark, much darker than is common among our border lasses, and yet with such a faint blush of pink breaking through her dainty colour, like the deeper flush at the heart of a sulphur rose.
Her lips were red, and kindly, and firm; and even then, at the first glance, I saw that light of mischief and mockery that danced away at the back of her great dark eyes.

She took me then and there as though I had been her heritage, put out her hand and plucked me.

She was, as I have said, in black, dressed in what seemed to me to be a wondrous fashion, with a black veil pushed up from her brow.
"Ah! Jack," said she, in a mincing English fashion, that she had learned at the boarding school.

"No, no, we are rather old for that"-- this because I in my awkward fashion was pushing my foolish brown face forward to kiss her, as I had done when I saw her last.

"Just hurry up like a good fellow and give a shilling to the conductor, who has been exceedingly civil to me during the journey." I flushed up red to the ears, for I had only a silver fourpenny piece in my pocket.