Mark Rutherford's Deliverance by Mark Rutherford

I have said that Ellen had a child by her first husband. Marie, for that was her name, was now ten years old. She was like neither her mother nor father, and yet was shot as it were with strange gleams which reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and then disappeared. She had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes, round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose in particular being so. She had a tendency to be stout. For books she did not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught her to read. She was not orderly or careful about her person, and in this respect was a sore disappointment -- not that she was positively careless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and her wardrobe neat. She was fond of bright colours, which was another trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness. She was not by any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of expressing herself upon persons and things. A stranger looking at her would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, and dull. She was neither one nor the other. She ate little, although she was fond of sweets. Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she suffered to explode. I remember once when she was a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go. She besought, but it was in vain. We could not afford cabs, and there was no omnibus. Marie, finding all her entreaties were useless, quietly walked out of the room; and after some little time her mother, calling her and finding she did not come, went to look for her. She had gone into the backyard, and was sitting there in the rain by the side of the water-butt. She was soaked, and her best clothes were spoiled. I must confess that I did not take very kindly to her. I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, in fact, painful to be obliged to teach her. I thought that perhaps she might have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, and our attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies were a failure. She was more or less of a locked cabinet to me. I tried her with the two or three keys which I had, but finding that none of them fitted, I took no more pains about her.