ordinary sights, such as raw country girls
are always taken to.«
    »Do you call yourself a raw country girl?« said Lydgate, looking at her with
an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure.
But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her
hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits - an habitual gesture with her as pretty
as any movements of a kitten's paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a
kitten: she was a sylph caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon's.
    »I assure you my mind is raw,« she said immediately; »I pass at Middlemarch.
I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbours. But I am really afraid of
you.«
    »An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her
knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things
- as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language
between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so
the bears can get taught.«
    »Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring
all your nerves,« said Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where
Fred having opened the piano, at his father's desire, that Rosamond might give
them some music, was parenthetically performing »Cherry Ripe!« with one hand.
Able men who have passed their examinations will do these things sometimes, not
less than the plucked Fred.
    »Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate
ill,« said Rosamond. »He has an ear.«
    Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
    Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, »You perceive, the
bears will not always be taught.«
    »Now then, Rosy!« said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward
for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. »Some good rousing tunes
first.«
    Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a
county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle)
was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our
provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which
offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the
executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing