Chapter: THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for
with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such
purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of
wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of
red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey
limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and
hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they
surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little
pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of
the scale.

Hetty blushed a deep rose-colour when Captain Donnithorne entered the
dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for
it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under
long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him
about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and
cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity
but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had
been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be
interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Hetty
tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed,
coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of
themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only
of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty
like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and
to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the
state of mind into which it throws you. Hetty Sorrel's was that sort
of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Poyser, who professed to despise all personal
attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually
gazed at Hetty's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and
after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety
to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold
her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were
safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, "the naughtier the little
huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked."

It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a
rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large
dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her
curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at
work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her
white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely
was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low
plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with
its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it
fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled
buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have
had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have
seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for
otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she
would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I
might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you
had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes
after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when
the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like
that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive
catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring
day. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young
frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a
false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for
example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you
a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in
the middle of a bog.

And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty
girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a
charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white
neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand,
and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected
without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then
the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure,
so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful
firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Hetty was
particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance
of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she
handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery.

"I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July,
Mrs. Poyser," said Captain Donnithorne, when he had sufficiently admired
the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and
shorthorns. "You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you
to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Will you
promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Hetty? If I don't get your
promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart
young farmers will take care to secure you."

Hetty smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Poyser
interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire
could be excluded by any meaner partners.

"Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm
sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and
thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening."

"Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who
can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?" the captain
continued, determined to make Hetty look at him and speak to him.

Hetty dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy,
half-coquettish glance at him as she said, "Yes, thank you, sir."

"And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Poyser; your
little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on
the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women
when I'm a bald old fellow."

"Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first," said Mrs. Poyser, quite
overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and
thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this
remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to
be "very full of his jokes," and was a great favourite throughout the
estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure
things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there
was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and
returns of ten per cent.

"But where is Totty to-day?" he said. "I want to see her."

"Where IS the little un, Hetty?" said Mrs. Poyser. "She came in here not
long ago."

"I don't know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think."

The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty,
passed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however,
without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her
person and attire unfit for presentation.

"And do you carry the butter to market when you've made it?" said the
Captain to Hetty, meanwhile.

"Oh no, sir; not when it's so heavy. I'm not strong enough to carry it.
Alick takes it on horseback."

"No, I'm sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights.
But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don't you?
Why don't you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it's so green and
pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church."

"Aunt doesn't like me to go a-walking only when I'm going somewhere,"
said Hetty. "But I go through the Chase sometimes."

"And don't you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw
you once in the housekeeper's room."

"It isn't Mrs. Best, it's Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, as I go to see.
She's teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea
with her to-morrow afternoon."

The reason why there had been space for this tete-a-tete can only be
known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered
rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment
allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore.
But now she appeared holding her mother's hand--the end of her round
nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and
water.

"Here she is!" said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the
low stone shelf. "Here's Totty! By the by, what's her other name? She
wasn't christened Totty."

"Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte's her christened
name. It's a name i' Mr. Poyser's family: his grandmother was named
Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it's got to
Totty. To be sure it's more like a name for a dog than a Christian
child."

"Totty's a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a
pocket on?" said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets.

Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a
tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse.

"It dot notin' in it," she said, as she looked down at it very
earnestly.

"No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I've got some
things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare I've
got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise they
make in Totty's pink pocket." Here he shook the pocket with the five
sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in
great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by
staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in
the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, "Oh for shame,
you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he's given you I'm
sure, sir, it's very kind of you; but she's spoiled shameful; her father
won't have her said nay in anything, and there's no managing her. It's
being the youngest, and th' only gell."

"Oh, she's a funny little fatty; I wouldn't have her different. But I
must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me."

With a "good-bye," a bright glance, and a bow to Hetty Arthur left the
dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector
had been so much interested in his conversation with Dinah that he would
not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what they
had been saying to each other.

 The Dairy The freshness of the dairy favorably sets off Hetty's fresh seventeen-year-old beauty, and Arthur Donnithorne is attracted to her kittenish loveliness. Even Aunt Poyser likes to look at Hetty's beauty, though she is usually scolding her. Arthur mentions his birthday celebration in July and asks Hetty to reserve two dances for him. He invites the whole Poyser family. When the aunt runs off to find her daughter Totty, who is usually into mischief, Arthur invites Hetty to go walking with him in the Chase on his estate sometime. She mentions that she goes on some afternoons to Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, to learn lace-mending and has to walk through the Chase. Arthur gives three-year-old Totty some coins for a present and prepares to find Mr. Irwine, who has been speaking to Dinah Morris.

