Lais was beautiful, Thais was alluring, and Berenice was famous for her beauty, but then, could either of them have shown such arms—so long, so graceful in their every movement, so subtly rounded in their lines, arms which, for all their seeming firmness, must (I thought) be wonderfully soft to the touch, and smooth as ivory, and which found a delicate sheen where the light kissed them?
"We have spent four shillings for meat this week, Peter!" said
Charmian, glancing up suddenly.
"Good!" said I.
"Nonsense, sir—four shillings is most extravagant!"
"Oh!—is it, Charmian?"
"Why, of course it is."
"Oh!" said I; "yes—perhaps it is."
"Perhaps!" said she, curling her lip at me, "perhaps, indeed!" Having said which, Charmian became absorbed in her accounts again, and I in Charmian.
In Homer we may read that the loveliness of Briseis caused Achilles much sorrow; Ovid tells us that Chione was beautiful enough to inflame two gods, and that Antiope's beauty drew down from heaven the mighty Jove himself; and yet, was either of them formed and shaped more splendidly than she who sat so near me, frowning at what she had written, and petulantly biting her pen?
"Impossible!" said I, so suddenly that Charmian started and dropped her pen, which I picked up, feeling very like a fool.