Page:Forget Me Not (1826).djvu/340



myself on knowing by sight and by name almost every man and boy in our parish, from eight years old to eighty. I cannot say quite so much for the women. They—the elder of them at least—are more within doors, more hidden. One does not meet them in the fields and the highways; their duties are close housekeepers, and live under cover. The girls, to be sure, are often enough in sight, true “creatures of the element,” basking in the sun, racing in the wind, rolling in the dust, dabbling in the water—hardier, dirtier, noisier, more sturdy defiers of heat and cold and wet than boys themselves. One sees them quite often enough to know them; but then the little elves alter so much at every step of their approach to womanhood, that recognition becomes difficult, if not impossible. It is not merely growing—boys grow—it is positive, perplexing, and perpetual change: a butterfly hath not undergone more transmogrifications in its progress through this life, than a village belle in her arrival at the ripe age of seventeen.

The first appearance of the little lass is something after the manner of a caterpillar, crawling