"Just about!" said the other, who was as distinctly plain at first glance as the other was attractive. "But your run has given you a lovely colour!" she added admiringly. If the one wished to be shown up by contrast for her beauty and the other for her plainness, they had an object in travelling together.
"My hair must be in a shocking state, though," said the beautiful one, as Phil already designated her in his mind.
She drew a mirror from her bag, not to look at her colouring, of course, but to arrange a few strands of hair. Turning her head this way and that, she attended to the disarray due to her haste in dressing perhaps, as well as to her rush for the train. If a woman's hand and arm and the particular way she holds her fingers when she shepherds strands of hair were more awkward, possibly fewer strands would need attention in public. There is something confidential in these quick fondling movements which have drawn a reader's eyelashes above the margin of a newspaper many millions of times. This girl made it an unusually graceful and leisurely function; and once, when her glance met Phil's, it seemed not to see that any person was opposite to her, yet it said: "I know that others are not displeased with what I see in the mirror; then why should I be?"
The plain girl also had some riotously stray strands of hair, but they did not concern her. It was not for her to find friendliness in mirrors.
"Here I am riding the way that the train is going when I like the other way!" she said, jumping up. "Let us change places."
"You dear mouse! You're always so thoughtful!" said the other beautiful one, complying.
Now she was facing Phil. Reminded that the suburbs of London were so uninteresting that he might be caught staring at a face short of the window instead of looking out it, he began to read his paper diligently. When they had left the chimney pots behind, he found that the plain one's objection to riding the way that the train was going apparently no longer applied; for she crossed over in a sudden, impulsive movement which seemed characteristic of a restless nature and with a sweeping gesture out of the window began talking of familiar landmarks.
Evidently both had been long absent from England, which was not their home. They mixed French with English in that bi-lingual facility which does not mean an interlarding of words but bursts of sentences. They criticised and compared what they saw with the Continent, and of the two the plain one seemed to get more enthusiasm out of their return.
Having both faces in the tail of his eye, Phil wondered why the plain one should ever want to travel in the other's company. He drifted into a comparative analysis of the two: The one with her masses of black hair, her small forehead, her luminous eyes, straight nose and expressive mouth, with its full lips and the oval chin—a classic type of its kind; the other with chestnut hair also in masses, but brushed unbecomingly back from the high, broad forehead, the large, black-brown eyes wide apart, a squarish chin and a lump of a nose. Yet analysed there was a resemblance; the genius touch of a sculptor might have transformed one face if it were plastic into the other. The features of one made an ensemble; those of the other were assertively in rebellion with one another.
But the amazing likeness was in the voices. Closing his eyes, Phil had difficulty in telling which one of the two was speaking. Both voices were pleasant, though the beautiful girl's voice seemed much the pleasanter of the two when his eyes were open and the plain one's an imitation.