“Oh,” put in Missy modestly, while her heart palpitated, “my hair is just mouse-coloured.”
“No,” denied Tess authoritatively, “you've got nut-brown locks. And your eyes, too, are something like Phyllis's eyes—great grey eyes with subtle depths. Only yours haven't got saucy hints in them.”
Missy wished her eyes included the saucy hints. However, she was enthralled by Tess's comparison, though incomplete. Was it possible Tess was right?
Missy wasn't vain, but she'd heard before that she had “beautiful eyes.” Perhaps Tess WAS right. Missy blushed and was silent. Just then, even had she known the proper reply to make, she couldn't have voiced it. As “the Duchess” might have phrased it, she was “naturally covered with confusion.”
But already Tess had flitted from the delightfully embarrassing theme of her friend's looks.
“Wouldn't it be grand,” she murmured dreamily, “to live in England?”
“Yes—grand,” murmured Missy in response.
“Everything's so—so baronial over there.”
Baronial!—as always, Tess had hit upon the exact word. Missy sighed again. She had always loved Cherryvale, always been loyal to it; but no one could accuse Cherryvale of being “baronial.”
That evening, when Missy went upstairs to smooth her “nut-brown locks” before supper, she gazed about her room with an expression of faint dissatisfaction. It was an adequate, even pretty room, with its flowered wall-paper and lace curtains and bird's-eye maple “set”; and, by the window, a little drop-front desk where she could sit and write at the times when feeling welled in her till it demanded an outlet.