One particular picture in a number of the English Illustrated, a group of ladies at an evening party, mystifies her immensely.
“Why are all these women cut out in the middle?” she asks with a puzzled expression. “Are they all born like that?”
“No,” I reply.
“Then do they make themselves like that?” glancing at her own slender though by no means exaggerated figure.
“Yes; they make themselves so, I suppose. It is a custom of our nation, and other European nations,” I explain as best I can.
“Oh!” with another look at the ultra-fashionably slender figure of the woman in the foreground of the picture. “How very uncomfortable!”
We both laugh; I because Mousmé makes this last remark in such a finite voice, and without any real idea of its naïve truthfulness, and she because to her loose-robed little body such a fashion appears highly ridiculous.
There is evidently something mysterious about this funny custom, which, as Mousmé says, “makes women look as if a dog had bitten a great piece out of them, both sides;” for she says, ere turning over the page:
“Shall I do that when I go with you to England?”
“No, certainly not.”