"I did so want to be beautiful. I would have dived to the bottom of the filthiest hole in that old spruit a dozen times a day to make myself the tiniest atom less ugly than I was. Do you remember that deep part where the water was so clear and we could see hundreds of crabs pulling pieces of flesh off the leg of the dead horse?"
"Oh sis yes! I wondered how you could go and look at the stinking thing day after day."
"I used to be pretending to myself that it was my aunt they were eating. Oh Kykie! I have some dark caves in my soul!"
"And no wonder, surely to goodness. Never will I forget the night we opened the door and you fell into the house, all blood and mud, and your eyes like a mal-meit's[3] flaring and flickering like the sulphur on a match."
[3] Mad-maid.
Poppy covered her eyes.
"Don't talk about it——"
At this time a telephone bell began to ring somewhere in the house, and Kykie on her feet in an instant, flew from the room at top speed. She came back later to say that Luce Abinger had called up to tell her he would not be home to dinner. Poppy was delighted.
"Oh Kykie! that means that he is dining with old friends; and it will do him so much good, and he'll want to be cheerful and sociable with all the world again, and we shan't be locked up any more," she cried all in one breath. "And now you needn't bother about dinner, but come and help me unpack, and I'll show you all my clothes and the nice things I've brought back for you."
"For me, gracious saints!"