“Will you do?” Stewart echoed, and Meredith’s phrase recurred to him—“an imp in porcelain”—how perfectly it described her! “You are entirely, absolutely, impeccably—oh, I haven’t adjectives enough! Only I wish I had a hundred candles instead of one!”
“But the clothes,” she said, and looked doubtfully down at them. “Do I look like a boy?”
“Not in the least!” he answered, promptly.
Her face fell.
“But then——”
“Perhaps it is just because I know you’re not one,” he reassured her. “Let me see if I can improve matters. The trousers are too large, especially about the waist. They seem in danger of—hum!” and indeed she was clutching them desperately with one hand. “We will make another hole in that belt about three inches back,” and he got out his knife and suited the action to the word. “There—that’s better—you can let go of them now! And we’ll turn up the legs about four inches—no, we’d better cut them off.” He set the candle on the floor, picked up the scissors, and carefully trimmed each leg. “But those feet are ridiculous,” he added, severely. “No real boy ever had feet like that!”
She stared down at them ruefully.
“They will seem larger when I get them full of mud,” she pointed out. “I thought of putting on a pair of your shoes, but gave it up, for I am afraid I could not travel very far in them. Fortunately these are very strong!”
He sniffed skeptically, but had to agree with her that his shoes were impossible.
“There is one thing more,” and she lifted her cap and let her tucked-up hair fall about her shoulders. “This must be cut off.”