CHAPTER NINTH.
Her air, her manners, all who saw admired, Courteous, though coy, and gentle, though retired; The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed; And ease of heart her every look conveyed.
Crabbe.
The visits of the Laird thus again sunk into matters of ordinary course, from which nothing was to be expected or apprehended.

If a lover could have gained a fair one as a snake is said to fascinate a bird, by pertinaciously gazing on her with great stupid greenish eyes, which began now to be occasionally aided by spectacles, unquestionably Dumbiedikes would have been the person to perform the feat.

But the art of fascination seems among the _artes perditae,_ and I cannot learn that this most pertinacious of starers produced any effect by his attentions beyond an occasional yawn.
In the meanwhile, the object of his gaze was gradually attaining the verge of youth, and approaching to what is called in females the middle age, which is impolitely held to begin a few years earlier with their more fragile sex than with men.

Many people would have been of opinion, that the Laird would have done better to have transferred his glances to an object possessed of far superior charms to Jeanie's, even when Jeanie's were in their bloom, who began now to be distinguished by all who visited the cottage at St.Leonard's Crags.
Effie Deans, under the tender and affectionate care of her sister, had now shot up into a beautiful and blooming girl.

Her Grecian shaped head was profusely rich in waving ringlets of brown hair, which, confined by a blue snood of silk, and shading a laughing Hebe countenance, seemed the picture of health, pleasure, and contentment.