But Lucy had sat at her father's elbow, had read to him of evenings when he went to sleep, had brought him his slippers and looked after the comforts of his easy chair.

All this she had done as a child; but when she stood at the coffin head, and knelt at the coffin side, then she was a woman.
She was smaller in stature than either of her three sisters, to all of whom had been acceded the praise of being fine women--a eulogy which the people of Exeter, looking back at the elder sisters, and the general remembrance of them which pervaded the city, were not willing to extend to Lucy.

"Dear--dear!" had been said of her; "poor Lucy is not like a Robarts at all; is she, now, Mrs.Pole ?"--for as the daughters had become fine women, so had the sons grown into stalwart men.

And then Mrs.Pole had answered: "Not a bit; is she, now?
Only think what Blanche was at her age.

But she has fine eyes, for all that; and they do say she is the cleverest of them all." And that, too, is so true a description of her that I do not know that I can add much to it.