She was, however, always called 'Ipsie' by her playmates, and even her mother and father, who were entirely responsible for her name in the first instance, found it somewhat weighty for daily utterance and gladly adopted the simpler sobriquet, though the elders of the village generally were rather fond of calling her with much solemn unction: 'Baby Hippolyta,' as though it were an elaborate joke. Ipsie was one of the loveliest children in the village, and though she was only two-and-a-half years old, she was fully aware of her own charms. She was pushed to the front of the Maypole this morning, merely because she was pretty,--and she knew it. That was why she lifted the extreme edge of her short skirt and put it in her mouth, thereby displaying her fat innocent bare legs extensively, and smiled at the Reverend John Walden out of the uplifted corners of her forget-me-not blue eyes.

Then there was Bob Keeley, more or less breathless with excitement, having just got back again from Badsworth Hall, his friend the butcher boy having driven him to and from that place 'in a jiffy' as he afterwards described it,--and there was a very sparkling, smiling, vivacious little person of about fifteen, in a lilac cotton frock, who wore a wreath of laburnum on her black curls, no other than Kitty Spruce, generally alluded to in the village as 'Bob Keeley's gel';--and standing near Baby Hippolyta, or 'Ipsie,' was the acknowledged young beauty of the place, Susie Prescott, a slip of a lass with a fair Madonna-like face, long chestnut curls and great, dark, soft eyes like pansies filled with dew. Susie had a decided talent for music,--she sang very prettily, and led the village choir, under the guidance of Miss Janet Eden, the schoolmistress. This morning, however, she was risking the duties of conductorship on her own account, and very sweet she looked in her cheap white nuns-veiling gown, wearing a bunch of narcissi carelessly set in her hair and carrying a flowering hazel-wand in her hand, with which she beat time for her companions as they followed her bird-like carolling in the 'Mayers' Song.' But just now all singing had ceased,--and every one of the children had their round eyes fixed on John Walden with a mingling of timidity, affection and awe that was very winning and pretty to behold.