In the room from which the conversation proceeded,
Bathsheba and her servant-companion, Liddy Small-
bury were to be discovered sitting upon the floor, and
sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles, and
rubbish spread out thereon -- remnants from the house-
hold stores of the late occupier. Liddy, the maltster's
great-granddaughter, was about Bathsheba's equal in
age, and her face was a prominent advertisement of the
features' might have lacked in form was amply made up
for by perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was
the softened ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity
and, like the presentations of those great colourists, it
was a face which kept well back from the boundary
between comeliness and the ideal. Though elastic in
nature she was less daring than Bathsheba, and occa-
sionally showed some earnestness, which consisted half
of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness superadded
by way of duty.
Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-
brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person
who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age
than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects.
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