“Crying! That’s nothing at the end of a day’s work. Anyone can cry in the evenings—in fact, it’s easier than not. One’s tired, and it’s been beastly hot all day, and it’s a relief to sit down and howl. Most girls do it regularly if they aren’t going out anywhere, and can risk having a red nose. Wait till you see a girl crying at eight o’clock in the morning—then it’s time enough to be sorry for her. If she cries then, it’s because she can’t help it. If she cries at night she’s just letting herself go.”
“My difficulty is that I never can cry, however much I feel things,” said Miss Saxon, true to the feminine instinct, so much condemned by Lydia’s grandfather, of making instant personal application of a generality.
“I get awfully upset—quite foolishly so, mother always says. ‘You’ll never go through life, dear,’ she says, ‘if you take every little thing to heart so much.’ It’s awfully wearing, too—things kind of prey on me. I just go on turning them over and over in my own mind, you know. But as for crying—well, it’s just as though I couldn’t. I’d give anything to, sometimes—you know, I feel it would be such a relief, like—but I never was one to cry, even as a child.”
Miss Saxon, much interested in her own monologue, appeared as though she might go on for ever.
Rosie Graham made an expressive grimace at Lydia, and formed with her lips:
“Good reason why!” at the same time pointing to her own little sallow face, with a glance at Marguerite’s carefully rose-tinted cheeks.
Lydia smiled discreetly, safely conscious that she had her back turned to Miss Saxon.
The opportunity for which she had been looking came that evening.
She waited for Gina.
The other girls went down to the dressing-room, pinned on their straw and flower-wreathed hats, took hasty glances into the tiny mirror propped up against the window, and rubbed at their shining, heated faces with leaves of papier poudre, torn from little pink or blue books. Only Marguerite Saxon possessed a small silver elegance, hanging from a long chain, containing a little puff, with which she dabbed the tip of her nose delicately.