"Thank Heaven for a little peace," sighed Norah to herself. She sat there in a delicious paradise of self-esteem and, looking at herself in the glass, was so much thrilled in the contemplation of her own beauty that she forgot all about her engagement, all about the lack of spectators, all about everything except the way her features conformed to what in women she most admired. She thought compassionately of her mother's faded fairness, and wondered with a frown of esthetic concern why her mother's face was so downy. If her own chin began to show signs of fluffing over like that, she would spend her last halfpenny on removing hairs that actually in some lights glistened like a smear of honey; luckily there was nothing in her own face that she wanted to change. Her mother must have been pretty once, but never more than pretty, because she had blue eyes. How glad she was that with her light hair went deep brown eyes instead of commonplace blue eyes, and that her mouth instead of being rather full and indefinite was a firm bow the beauty of which did not depend upon the freshness of youth. Not that she need fear even the far-off formidable thirties with such a complexion and such teeth. Apart from superfluous hairs her mother's complexion was still good, and even her father had white teeth. Her own nose, straight and small, was neither so straight nor so small as to be insipid, and her chin, tapering exquisitely, was cleft, not dimpled. Dimples seemed to Norah vulgar, and she could not imagine why they were ever considered worthy of admiration. No, with all her perfection of color and form she was mercifully free from the least suggestion of "dolliness"; she was too tall, and had much too good a figure ever to run any risk of that.
"I'm really more beautiful even than I thought, now that I'm looking at myself very critically. And, of course, I shall get more beautiful, especially when I've found out what way my hair suits me best. I shall make all sorts of experiments with it. There's bound to be one way that suits me better than others, if only it isn't too unfashionable. I suppose father hopes secretly that I shall make a brilliant marriage, because even he must realize that I am exceptionally beautiful."
She played condescendingly with the notion of being able to announce that she was engaged to a viscount, and imagined with what awe the family would receive the news.
"However, that's my affair," she decided. "It's not likely father will bring back a viscount to supper. Besides, I'm not mercenary, and if I choose to love a poor man I will. My looks were given to me, not to father, and if he thinks he's going to get the benefit of them he's made a great mistake."
Norah's meditations were suddenly interrupted by the entrance of her sister Dorothy, a dark, pleasant, practical girl of sixteen, who was already so much interested in household affairs that Norah feared her indifference to dress was due to something more than immaturity, was indeed the outcome of an ineradicable propensity toward dowdiness.
"I wish you wouldn't burst into rooms like that," she protested, crossly.
But Dorothy only hummed round the room in search of what she was looking for, and paid no more attention to her elder sister than a bee would have done.
"And if you've got to come up-stairs to our room when you're in the middle of cooking," Norah went on, "you might at least wipe your hands and your arms first. You're covering everything with flour," she grumbled.
"That's better than covering it with powder," retorted Dorothy.
"What a silly remark!"