“Only—look out, Billy, you’ll let that black drop run down the side of her face—only something a girl I know said about fair men being like weak tea!”
“Meaning to say, I suppose, that she didn’t think much of your taste in fiancés?” suggested Billy Waters, with a mischievous laugh. I laughed too. And for the several score of times since we have been here together, I thought to myself what a delightful and unusual and thoroughly satisfactory arrangement this friendship of ours had turned out to be.
I never dreamed that at that very moment the life of that friendship had about five more minutes to run.
“There!” said Billy, picking himself up and taking a few steps back from the figure, to survey it, with his fair head on one side. “You can’t say it isn’t an improvement. What would your friend say to that coloured hair?”
“Strong tea,” I suggested flippantly. “Tea that’s stood too long!”
“You aren’t looking at it. Come over here and see!”
I straightened myself and went and stood beside him.
“As a matter of fact, Nancy, the lady’s got rather a look of you!”
And actually something in the contrast of the glistening black locks against the creamy-pale face with the now scarlet-tinted lips might have been vaguely characteristic of what, night and morning, I see in my own mirror.