She had rather darkish brown hair, and she was
tall and straight as an arrow. This she was, by the way, even into
old age. She surprised, shocked, and attracted all the sober persons
in our circle. Her ways were not their ways. She would walk out by
herself on a starry night without a single companion, and cause
thereby infinite talk, which would have converged to a single focus
if it had not happened that she was also in the habit of walking out
at four o'clock on a summer's morning, and that in the church porch
of a little village not far from us, which was her favourite resting-
place, a copy of the De Imitatione Christi was found which belonged
to her. So the talk was scattered again and its convergence
prevented. She used to say doubtful things about love. One of them
struck my mother with horror. Miss Leroy told a male person once,
and told him to his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, and
they agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a cross as a
ceremony, it would be as good to her as marriage. This may seem a
trifle, but nobody now can imagine what was thought of it at the time
it was spoken. My mother repeated it every now and then for fifty
years. It may be conjectured how easily any other girls of our
acquaintance would have been classified, and justly classified, if
they had uttered such barefaced Continental immorality.
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