‘Ain’t it right to say ’ow?’ she asked, anxious for instruction.
‘Haven’t you any ear?’ was Jocelyn’s answer, turning to her with a kind of pounce.
Sally was still more surprised. What a question. Of course she had an ear. Two of them. And she was going to tell him so when his face, as he looked at her, changed to the one he had when he got talking about heaven and angels.
For how could Jocelyn stay irritated with anything like that? He had only to turn and look at her for all his silly anger to shrivel up. In the presence of her loveliness, what a mere mincing worm he was, with his precise ways of speech, and his twopenny-halfpenny little bit of superior education. As though it mattered, as though it mattered, thought Jocelyn.
‘Oh, Sally, I didn’t mean it,’ he said, catching up her hand and kissing it, which made her feel very awkward and ashamed, somehow, having a thing like that done to her hand, and in broad daylight, too, and out of doors. ‘But you should try and tuck your hair more out of sight—look, this way,’ he went on, gently taking her hat off and arranging her hair for her before putting it on again. ‘You see,’ he explained, ‘it does catch the eye so, doesn’t it, my beautiful, flaming seraphim—oh, my God,’ he added under his breath, ‘how beautiful you are!’
‘It don’t make no difference,’ said Sally in a resigned voice.
‘What doesn’t?’
‘If you tucks it in or don’t. They always looks at me. We tried everything at ’ome, Father and Mother did, but they always looks at me.’
She spoke with deprecation and apology. Best let him know the worst at once, for she was thoroughly aware of her disabilities and the endless trouble she had given her parents; while as for their scoldings, and exhortations, and dark hints of bad things that might happen to her, hadn’t they rung in her ears since she was twelve? But what could she do? There she was. Having been born like that, how could she help it?
And another thing she couldn’t help, though she was unconscious that she did it, was that every time she caught the amiable eye of a stranger, and she had never yet met any stranger who hadn’t amiable eyes, she smiled. Just a little; just an involuntary gratitude for the friendliness in the eye that had been caught. And as she had two dimples, otherwise invisible, the smile, which would anyhow have been lovely on that face, was of exceeding loveliness, and complications followed, and angry chidings from the worn-out Pinners, and, in Sally, a resigned surprise.