"Fell away from what?" asked Radcliffe.
"Fell away from nothin'. That's what they call a figger o' speech. Means you ain't got thin."
"Well, you've got thin, haven't you, Martha? I don't 'member your cheeks had those two long lines in 'em before."
"Lines?" repeated Martha, regarding herself in the mirror of an étagère she was polishing. "Them ain't lines. Them's dimples."
Radcliffe scrutinized her critically for a moment. "They're not like Miss Lang's dimples," he observed at last. "Miss Lang's dimples look like when you blow in your milk to cool it—they're there, an' then they ain't there. She vanishes 'em in, an' she vanishes 'em out, but those lines in your face, they just stay. Only they weren't there before, when you were here."
"The secret is, my dimples is the kind that takes longer to vanish 'em out when you once vanished 'em in. Mine's way-train dimples. Miss Lang's is express. But you can take it from me, dimples is faskinatin', whatever specie they are."
"What's faskinatin'?"
"It's the thing in some things that, when it ain't in other things, you don't care a thing about 'em."
"Are you faskinatin'?"
"That's not for me to say," said Martha, feigning coyness. "But this much I will confess, that some folks which shall be nameless, considers me so. An' they'd oughter know."