CHAPTER VI.
The first Step towards the Ladder.
If there is one thing on earth, more lovely than another, it is a fair girl of the tender age of Winifred Wood! Her beauty awakens no feeling beyond that of admiration.

The charm of innocence breathes around her, as fragrance is diffused by the flower, sanctifying her lightest thought and action, and shielding her, like a spell, from the approach of evil.
Beautiful is the girl of twelve,--who is neither child nor woman, but something between both, something more exquisite than either! Such was the fairy creature presented to Thames Darrell, under the following circumstances.
Glad to escape from the scene of recrimination that ensued between his adopted parents, Thames seized the earliest opportunity of retiring, and took his way to a small chamber in the upper part of the house, where he and Jack were accustomed to spend most of their leisure in the amusements, or pursuits, proper to their years.

He found the door ajar, and, to his surprise, perceived little Winifred seated at a table, busily engaged in tracing some design upon a sheet of paper.

She did not hear his approach, but continued her occupation without raising her head.
It was a charming sight to watch the motions of her tiny fingers as she pursued her task; and though the posture she adopted was not the most favourable that might have been chosen for the display of her sylphlike figure, there was something in her attitude, and the glow of her countenance, lighted up by the mellow radiance of the setting sun falling upon her through the panes of the little dormer-window, that seemed to the youth inexpressibly beautiful.

Winifred's features would have been pretty, for they were regular and delicately formed, if they had not been slightly marked by the small-pox;--a disorder, that sometimes spares more than it destroys, and imparts an expression to be sought for in vain in the smoothest complexion.