"If you do not care for the height in front you can wear it hindside before. It is even just so fashionable," went on the first voice, regardless of sentiment. "Put it on, child, and don't be so foolish. What is a pound, and you a pupil teacher? There! You look beautiful. Now, give me my hat pins, I must go to that man downstairs."
A frou-frou of silk petticoats on the ladder stairs which led up from a corner of the living room made Ted look round.
He saw, first, a pair of many-strapped, beaded black shoes with superlatively high heels, next, an interval of trim, black openwork stockings, finally, in a tourbillon of laced silk flouncings, over which it let down a trailing black satin dress, a vision, in which Ted at once recognised the girl in curling pins; or rather her apotheosis, for she was now glorious both within and without.
Her beautiful figure was literally cased in a tight bodice, which looked as if she must have been melted and run into it ere it could be so guiltless of wrinkles. The heavy lace yoke with which it was made showed the whiteness of her skin beneath it; a whiteness which held its own against the double row of false pearls about her neck. For the rest she was planned, laid out, developed in exact accordance with a Paris model in a shop.
In one hand she held a most irresponsible creation, which Ted almost diagnosed as a hat, though it had neither crown nor brim, and in the other, a perfect sheaf of long, black-headed pins.
She smiled at him with frank favour and, saying carelessly, "The smith, my father, will attend to you, sir, when he has had tea," passed on to a little mirror on the wall, placed the irresponsible creation on her tumultuous yet disciplined waves of hair in the very last position of which any sane creature would have dreamt, and proceeded, apparently, to stick the long pins through her head.
Seeing, however, in the glass Ted's face of angry consternation, she flashed round on him tartly yet condescendingly.
"It is no use trying to hurry Dinas. They are country people, not like London or Blackborough. This is not Williams and Edwards, or such like place, I can tell you."
The name of the biggest drapery firm in Blackborough gave Ted a clue to some of his perplexity.
"I see," he said slowly, "that's how you come to be--you are in the shop, of course, aren't you?"