Gwenna Williams, twisting between finger and thumb the stalk of a daisy she had picked off the lawn, murmured something about it's being funny, love having anything to do with how often a girl washed!
"Of course you think Leslie is revoltingly unpoetic to suggest it. But it's sound enough," declared the elder girl. "Flowers don't look as if 'anything to do with' earth had ever touched them, do they? But aren't their roots bedded deep down in it right enough? All these hints I give you about Health and Body-culture, these are the Roots of the Rose. Some of them, anyhow. Especially washing. I tell you, Taff"—she spoke sepulchrally—"half the 'nice' girls we know don't wash enough. That's why they don't get half the attention they'd like. Men like what they call a 'healthy-looking' girl. As often as not it simply means the girl happens to be specially clean. Beauty's skin-deep; moral, look after your skin. Now, you do. No soap on your face, Taff?"
"No; just a 'clean' after washing, with Oatine and things like that."
"Right. Costs you about fourpence a week. It might cost four guineas, to judge from the economical spirit of some girls over that," said Leslie. "Then, to go on with this grossly material subject that is really the root of Poetry, do you shampoo your hair nice and often? It looks thick and soft and glossy and with the curls all big, as if you did."
"Oh, yes, I do. But then that's easy for me; it's short."
"Mine's long enough, but I do it religiously every fortnight. Pays me," said Miss Long candidly as she went on working. "Untidy it may be, but it does feel and smell all right. One of my medical students at the hospital where I trained for five minutes—the boy Monty, the Dean's son—he said once that the scent of my hair was like cherry-wood. 'Course I didn't confide in him that I watered it well with bay rum and rosemary every night. Better than being like Miss Armitage, the suffragette-woman here, who's so nice-minded that she's 'above' pampering the body. What's the consequence? She, and half the girls here, go about smelling—to put it plainly—like cold grease and goloshes! Can they wonder that men don't seem to think they'd be—be very nice to marry?"
"Some suffragettes, and sort of brainy women," hesitated Gwenna, "are married."
"Yes; and have you observed the usual type of their husbands?" scoffed Leslie. "Eugh!"
Gwenna, set upon her own subject, drew her back with innocent directness to the matter in hand.
"What else ought one to do? Besides lots of washing, besides taking care of one's hair and skin?"