“Very silly of me,” said Meta, brightening and laughing, but sighing. “I am only afraid Mrs. Arnott may think me individually unfit for the kind of life, as if I could not do what other women can. Do I look so?”
“You look as if you were meant to be put under a glass case!” said Ethel, surveying the little elegant figure, whose great characteristic was a look of exquisite finish, not only in the features and colouring, the turn of the head, and the shape of the small rosy-tipped fingers, but in everything she wore, from the braids of black silk hair, to the little shoe on her foot, and even in the very lightness and gaiety of her movements.
“Oh, Ethel!” cried Meta, springing up in dismay, and looking at herself in the glass. “What is the matter with me? Do tell me!”
“You’ll never get rid of it,” said Ethel, “unless you get yourself tattooed! Even separation from Bellairs hasn’t answered. And, after all, I don’t think it would be any satisfaction to Norman or papa. I assure you, Meta, whatever you may think of it, it is not so much bother to be prettier than needful, as it is to be uglier than needful.”
“What is needful?” said Meta, much amused.
“I suppose to be like Mary, so that nobody should take notice of one, but that one’s own people may have the satisfaction of saying, ‘she is pleasing,’ or ‘she is in good looks.’ I think Gertrude will come to that. That’s one comfort.”
“That is your own case, Ethel. I have heard those very things said of you.”
“Of my hatchet face!” said Ethel contemptuously. “Some one must have been desperately bent on flattering the Member’s family.”
“I could repeat more,” said Meta, “if I were to go back to the Commemoration, and to the day you went home.”
Ethel crimsoned, and made a sign with her hand, exclaiming, “Hark!”