Presently up stood Mary and Cicely, and Cicely flashed in the sun a
little silver mirror which she had brought and which had lain
glittering in the grass a little removed, and looked at herself, and
saw that her brown cheeks were as ever, with the exception of the
flush caused by rubbing, and tossed it with her undaunted laugh to
Mary. "The more fool be I!" she cried out, "instead of washing mine
own face in the May dew, better had it been had I locked thee in the
clothes-press, Mary Cavendish, and not let thee add to thy beauty,
while I but gave my cheeks the look of fever or the small-pox. I
trow the skin be off in spots, and all to no purpose! Look at
thyself, Mary Cavendish, and blush that thou be so much fairer than
one who loves thee!"
And verily Mary Cavendish did for a minute seem to blush as she cast
a glance at herself in the mirror and saw her marvellous rose of a
face, but the next minute the mirror flashed in the grass and her
arms were about Cicely Hyde's neck. "'Tis the dearest face in
Virginia, Cicely," said she, in her sweet, vehement way, and laid
her pink cheek against the other's plain one. And Cicely laughed,
and took her face in her two hands and held it away that she might
see it.
"What matters it to poor Cicely whether her own face be fair or not,
so long as it is dear to thee, and so long as she can see thine!"
she cried as passionately as a lad might have done, and I frowned,
not with jealousy, but with a curious dislike to such affection from
one maid to another, which I could never understand in myself. Had
Cicely Hyde had a lover, she would have said that fond speech to him
instead of Mary Cavendish, but lover she had none.
But all at once the two maids nudged one another, and turned their
faces, all convulsed with merriment, and I looked and saw that the
poor little black lass had crept on hands and knees to where the
mirror flashed in the grass, and was looking at her face therein
with such anxiety as might move one at once to tears and laughter,
to see if the dew had washed her white.
But Mary Cavendish ceased all in a minute her mirth, and went up to
the black child and took the mirror from her, and said, in the
sweetest voice of pity I ever heard, "'Tis not in one May dew nor
two, nor perchance in the dews of many years, you can wash your face
white, but sometime it will be."