"There's no 'of course' about it."
"Well it is at any rate."
"Go on, Carrie, and spout. You're dying to give it to us, I can see," urged Marjorie.
Carrie, who was in the elocution class and loved reciting, did not wait to be asked twice. Secure of an even moderately willing audience she began:
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift,
For service meetly worn;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.
"Now it is like her, isn't it?" she inquired at the end of the second stanza. "Shall I say you any more?"
"No, thanks" (some of the girls were moving hastily away). "That's quite enough. Yes, perhaps it is like Regina, if you look quite at the romantic side of her. Her hair is 'yellow like ripe corn', and her eyes, of course, are the main part about her. All the same, she's too substantial somehow for me to imagine her leaning out over any gold bar of Heaven. I'd be afraid she'd break it. She must weigh more than I do, and I'm eight stone—nearly! I was weighed at the station yesterday on the automatic machine."
"Well, if you're going to reckon attraction by lack of weight, I suppose you'd admire a living skeleton."