The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw, or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut glass, just enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks. They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in the absence of those in temporary power. In fact the establishment is quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other school in Eastbourne.
Which is all as it should be!
"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear in the book again so that it really does not matter about her nomenclature. "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was smiling all over her face and romping, simply romping through the French papers."
"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason that we christened Annie Smith, "she has a brain!"
Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.
"Yes! of course she has! And isn't she beautiful!"
Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a plate.
"Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different to all of us."
"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather importantly added Susan Brown, "bizarre——"
"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her neutral life.