But his feet were a somewhat more serious affair. My own shoes were outside the question utterly. When Emblem mischievously produced a pair, and suggested that he should try them on, his face was worthy of remark.
“What, those!” says he. “I might have tugged ’em on when I was four weeks old, but I’ll swear at no time thereafter.”
Emblem then produced a pair of hers. They fared but slightly better, she being a very dainty creature, a fact of which she was very well aware. Thereupon she repaired below-stairs to discover if any of the maids could lend assistance. In the end she returned in triumph with a not inelegant pair the cook went to church on Sundays in. She being one of the most buxom members of her tribe, they promised well.
It was a squeeze, but the lad found a way inside them, and walked presently across the room to allow us to judge of the general effect.
“A little more rose-pink upon his cheeks,” says I, “a rather darker eyebrow, a higher frill about his throat, a deeper shade of vermilion on his lips, two inches more ascension in his bust, and we shall have the rogue a rival to myself.”
Emblem, most enthusiastic in the cause, brimful of mirth, and with a pardonable vanity in her own accomplished hand, worked out these details to a miracle. A touch or two and Venus was superseded.
He looked into the mirror, and saw his image there, and kissed the glass to show how deeply the picture there presented had wrought upon his susceptibilities.
“A deuced fine girl!” says he. “Faith! I think I’ll marry her!”
“You are wedded to her for a day or two, at least,” says I.
The lad made the most charming picture. Those rare eyes of his were roving in a very saucy way; his features were alert and delicate, yet strong, and emphasized in delightful fashion by Mrs. Polly Emblem’s inimitable art. His clothes were very cunningly contrived, and he had a graceful ease of person that in a measure disguised the absence of soft curves. Besides, that enormous hoop petticoat was very much his friend, as it stood so far off from his natural figure that it created a shape of its own accord.