Let us peep at the actual Missy as she sits there dreaming: she has neutral-tinted brown hair, very soft and fine, which encircles her head in two thick braids to meet at the back under a big black bow; that bow, whether primly-set or tremulously-askew, is a fair barometer of the wearer's mood. The hair is undeniably straight, a fact which has often caused Missy moments of concern. (She used to envy Kitty Allen her tangling, light-catching curls till Raymond Bonner chanced to remark he considered curly hair “messy looking”; but Raymond's approval, for some reason, doesn't seem to count for as much as it used to, and, anyway, he is spending the summer in Michigan.) However, just below that too-demure parting, the eyes are such as surely to give her no regret. Twin morning-glories, we would call them-grey morning-glories!—opening expectant and shining to the Sun which always shines on enchanted seventeen. And, like other morning-glories, Missy's eyes are the shyest of flowers, ready to droop sensitively at the first blight of misunderstanding. That is the chiefest trouble of seventeen: so few are there, especially among old people, who seem to “understand.” And that is why one must often retire to the summerhouse or other solitary places where one can without risk of ridicule let one's dreams out for air.
Presently she shook off her dreams and returned to the scarcely less thrilling periodical which had evoked them. Here was another photograph—though not nearly so alluring as that of the Lady Sylvia; a woman who had become an authoritative expounder of political and national issues—politics again! Missy proceeded to read, but her full interest wasn't deflected till her eyes came to some thought-compelling words:
“It was while yet a girl in her teens, in a little Western town (“Oh!” thought Missy), that Miss Carson mounted the first rung of the ladder she has climbed to such enviable heights. She had just graduated from the local high school (“Oh! oh!” thought Missy) and, already prodded by ambition, persuaded the editor of the weekly paper to give her a job...”
Once again Missy's eyes wandered dreamily out over the yard...
Presently a voice was wafted out from the sideporch:
“Missy!—oh, Missy! Where are you?”
There was mother calling—bother! Missy picked up the Ladies' Home Messenger and trudged back to bondage.
“What in the world do you mean, Missy? You could write your name all over the parlour furniture for dust! And then those stockings—”
Missy dutifully set about her tasks. Yet, ah! it certainly is hard to dust and darn while one's soul is seething within one, straining to fly out on some really high enterprise of life. However one can, if one's soul strains hard enough, dust and dream; darn and dream. Especially if one has a helpful lilt, rhythmic to dust-cloth's stroke or needle's swing, throbbing like a strain of music through one's head:
Cosmos—Cosmos!—Cosmos—Cosmos!