They reached the church-door just as the minister, with his white wig
shedding powder on his venerable back, passed up the broad-aisle.
A perfectly decorous throng of the loiterers followed, and the
pews rapidly filled. The Colonel and his wife, being persons of
consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In
the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square
pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic
features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and
warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a
chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One
might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,--that she saved
the hire of an upper servant,--that she was an inveterate sewer and
cleaner, and would leave the world in time with an epitaph.
On the third figure and face the physiognomist might dwell
longer,--but that rather because youth, hope, and inexperience had
refused to make any of the life-marks that tell stories in faces.
There was abundant room for imagination and prophecy.
A figure not too tall, but full of wavy lines,--two dark-blue eyes,
whose full under-lids gave an expression of arch sweetness to the
glance,--a delicate complexion of roses and lilies, as suggestive of
fading as of blossoming,--features small, and not at all of the Greek
pattern,--and the rather large head and slightly developed bust,
typical of American rural beauty.
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