Angelica jumped up and brought them to her with alacrity. She felt very obliging this morning.
"Anything else I can do?" she asked cheerfully.
"No, thanks. It’s my diary. It’s just seven weeks ago that my child died."
She spoke quietly, but her face had assumed an odd, drawn look.
"Oh, Lord!" thought Angelica. "Now I suppose there’ll be a scene. And me feeling so happy!"
But there was no ‘scene,’ not even a tear. Polly had long ago got past that consolation. She put down her little book.
"Will you go and ask Mrs. Russell, please, when she wants to use the car? I think I’ll go out this afternoon."
Angelica sped off, glad to be released from this terrible ennui, and knocked upon Mrs. Russell’s door. She found her engaged in a surprising occupation. She was carefully rouging her cheeks—that tough, weather-beaten, brown skin!
Her hair was carefully dressed, and she wore a handsome embroidered white linen frock. She was tall and straight, with good shoulders and a fine, free play of limb. From the back she wasn’t bad, she looked like a muscular and athletic young woman until she turned and one saw her face. With the rouge and the blackened eyebrows, it had an indescribably repulsive look of dissipation; it was as if a man had rouged and bedecked himself.
"Well!" she said. "How do I look?"