“For,” said she, “Mrs. Mearely, being that kind of a brownish blonde, an’ not pure goldin nor yet flaxin, she’ll not take to loud shades. An’, Mr. Albert, if you don’t know a pale turkoy blue, nor a silver green nor a fawn, from a lavender, how’ll you know if the time’s come to cease your dumb yearnin’ and bust out?”
Earnestly seeking to profit by Mrs. Bunny’s instructions, he had carefully scanned, several times daily, the little ribbon and chiffon samples she had snipped from the reels and labelled for him. Even without them in his hand, he believed he should feel a degree of confidence if he were to encounter his charmer without her black streamers and decked in a “pastel.”
He looked up now and saw her—a sight for rapture, even to the eyes of an unimaginative widower of forty-two, and indeterminate as to colours. He saw that the customary dark garniture was not there. He saw the white lace bodice and sleeves, the blushing, radiant face, the rosy lips, humming softly and mellifluously. He saw the silk folds of shoulder-drape and girdle, where the sun cast a silvery sheen over the material’s hue.
What was that hue? Poor man: his heart leaped and fell before the dooming fact that his mind—forgetful of its recent culture in this subject—had automatically registered the word, “gray.” To find his intellect immediately correcting its stumbling with “lavender” was no consolation. Here, seemingly, was his great opportunity; it was calling to him, throwing coquettish flowerets, and chanting: “I am waiting for you”—yet, alas, he knew not whether the tint of that sun-silvered, silken girdle enjoined upon him a silence to “do it rev’rence” or coyly urged him to “bust out.”
Drops of moisture stood upon his brow, his hands became clammy, as he drew the pony up to the wall of Villa Rose garden. Mutely he invoked the spirit of Mrs. Bunny.
“Mrs. Mearely!”
“Yes,” she laughed back at him, cheerily. “Wasn’t that a lucky shot? It hit you, didn’t it?”
“Mrs. Mearely!” (What was that colour?)
“You’d better put your hat on again, to shade your eyes from the sun,” she cautioned, for Mr. Albert Andrews’s pale, prominent optics were almost popping out of their sockets.
“Mrs. Mearely!” (Surely that tint was blue? Now that she turned, and her body shadowed it from the sun’s rays, it certainly looked as blue as Mrs. Bunny’s inch of baby ribbon.)