Besides, it is much pleasanter to look at a pretty lass than at a vacant wall and twenty yards of uneven cobble-stones.
Now the girl was harmless enough--a red and white maid, plump as a partridge in the end of harvest.

She was forever humming at songs, singing little choruses, and inventing of new melodies, all tunefully and prettily enough.

And she would bring her dulcimer to the window and play them over, nodding her head to the instrument as she sang.
It was pleasant to watch her.

For sometimes when the music refused to run aright, she would frown at the dulcimer, as if the discord had been entirely its fault and it was old enough to know better.

Then sometimes she would look across abstractedly to the Red Tower, trying to recall a strain she had forgotten, with her finger all the while making the most bewitching dimple on her plump cheek.