She was a thin, agile, lightly made creature, apparently about eleven.

Her piercing black eyes, when they lifted, seemed to overweight the face, whereof the other features were at present small and pinched.
The mouth had a trick of remaining slightly open, showing a line of small pearly teeth; the chin was a little sharp and shrewish.

As for the hair, it promised to be splendid; at present it was an unkempt, tangled mass, which Hannah Grieve, the children's aunt, for her own credit's sake at chapel, or in the public street, made occasional violent attempts to reduce to order--to very little purpose, so strong and stubborn was the curl of it.

The whole figure was out of keeping with the English moorside, with the sheep, and the primroses.
But so indeed was that of the boy, whose dark colouring was more vivacious and pronounced than his sister's, because the red of his cheek and lip was deeper, while his features, though larger than hers, were more finely regular, and his eyes had the same piercing blackness, the same all-examining keenness, as hers.

The yellowish tones of his worn fustian suit and a red Tam-o'-Shanter cap completed the general effect of brilliancy and, as it were, _foreignness_.
Having finished his inspection of his water-mill, he scrambled across to the other side of the stream so as to be well out of his sister's way, and, taking out the volume which was stretching his pocket, he began to read it.