“If I am so—so pretty,” she said slowly, to herself, “people ought to like me, and,” sagaciously, “I must be pretty or he would not say so.”
And when she went to her room it must be confessed that she crept to the glass and stared at the reflection of the face framed in the abundant, falling hair, until Aimée, wondering at her quietness, raised her head from her pillow, and, seeing her, called her to her senses.
“Mollie,” she said, in her quietest way, “you look very nice, my dear and very picturesque, and I don't wonder at your admiring yourself; but if you stand there much longer in your bare feet you will have influenza, and then you will have to wear a flannel round your throat, and your nose will be red, and you won't derive much satisfaction from your looking-glass for a week to come.”
CHAPTER IX. ~ IN WHICH WE ARE UNORTHODOX.
“SOMETHING,” announced Phil, painting away industriously at his picture,—"something is up with Grif. Can any of you explain what it is?”
Mollie, resting her elbows on the window-ledge, turned her head over her shoulder; 'Toinette, tying Tod's sleeves with red ribbon, looked up; Aimée went on with her sewing, the two little straight lines making themselves visible on her forehead between her eyebrows. The fact of something being “up” with any one of their circle was enough to create a wondering interest.
“There is no denying,” Phil proceeded, “that he is changed somehow or other. He is not the same fellow that he was a few months ago,—before Dolly went away.”
“It is Dolly he is bothering about,” said Mollie, concisely.
Then Aimée was roused.