Lord Ormont and his Aminta | Page 3

It lasted half a minute, and left a ruffle for a good half- hour. Even the
younger fellows, without knowing what affected them, were moved by
the new picture of a girl, as if it had been a frontispiece of a romantic
story some day to be read. She looked compelled to look, but
consenting and unashamed; at home in submission; just the look that
wins observant boys, shrewd as dogs to read by signs, if they are

interested in the persons. They read Browny's meaning: that Matey had
only to come and snatch her; he was her master, and she was a brave
girl, ready to go all over the world with him; had taken to him as he to
her, shot for shot. Her taking to the pick of the school was a capital
proof that she was of the right sort. To be sure, she could not much help
herself.
Some of the boys regretted her not being fair. But, as they felt, and
sought to explain, in the manner of the wag of a tail, with elbows and
eyebrows to one another's understanding, fair girls could never have let
fly such look; fair girls are softer, woollier, and when they mean to
look serious, overdo it by craping solemn; or they pinafore a jigging
eagerness, or hoist propriety on a chubby flaxen grin; or else they dart
an eye, or they mince and prim and pout, and are sigh-away and dying-
ducky, given to girls' tricks. Browny, after all, was the girl for Matey.
She won a victory right away and out of hand, on behalf of her
cloud-and- moon sisters, as against the sunny-meadowy; for slanting
intermediates are not espied of boys in anything: conquered by Browny;
they went over to her colour, equal to arguing, that Venus at her
mightiest must have been dark, or she would not have stood a
comparison with the forest Goddess of the Crescent, swanning it
through a lake--on the leap for run of the chase--watching the dart, with
her humming bow at breast. The fair are simple sugary thing's, prone to
fat, like broad-sops in milk; but the others are milky nuts, good to bite,
Lacedaemonian virgins, hard to beat, putting us on our mettle; and they
are for heroes, and they can be brave. So these boys felt, conquered by
Browny. A sneaking native taste for the forsaken side, known to
renegades, hauled at them if her image waned during the week; and it
waned a little, but Sunday restored and stamped it.
By a sudden turn the whole upper-school had fallen to thinking of girls,
and the meeting on the Sunday was a prospect. One of the day-boarders
had a sister in the seminary of Miss Vincent. He was plied to obtain
information concerning Browny's name and her parents. He had it pat
to hand in answer. No parents came to see her; an aunt came now and
then. Her aunt's name was not wanted. Browny's name was Aminta

Farrell.
Farrell might pass; Aminta was debated. This female Christian name
had a foreign twang; it gave dissatisfaction. Boy after boy had a try at it,
with the same effect: you could not speak the name without a pursing
of the month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one little
fellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common
favour, topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle
stump on the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says
this youngster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided
to business, "Aminta."
He made it funny by saying it as if to himself and the ground, in a
subdued way, while he swung his leg on a half-circle, like a skater,
hands in pockets. He was a sly young rascal, innocently precocious
enough, and he meant no disrespect either to Browny or to Matey; but
he had to run for it, his delivery of the name being so like what was in
the breasts of the senior fellows, as to the inferiority of any Aminta to
old Matey, that he set them laughing; and Browny was on the field, to
reprove them, left of the tea-booth, with her school-mates, part of her
head under a scarlet parasol.
A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the
standard of old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit, the
school was bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her for
taking her share in the story, like the brigand's wife loading gnus for
him while he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the
mountain-ledge below, who drops on his back with a