It is strange how the stalking shape of Death seemed to be clanking his dry bones everywhere for me that day! It seemed to grin at me when I smiled in pride at seeing Little Yeogh Wough in the khaki of the Officers' Training Corps. It grinned, too, at the other women, who were there in hundreds—mothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins of the boys—all looking like butterflies in frocks of the "confection" kind and hats from Paris or from the Maison Lewis.
What a mockery clothes are when the great things of life come along!
"Roland, are you satisfied with my dress and hat?" I asked him in a whisper, when I got a chance.
"Of course I am. They look better than anybody else's here."
"But they wouldn't look half so nice laid out on a bed as most of these other people's things would."
"No. I don't suppose they would. That's just why they look so much better on."
"You clever boy! Then you've found out already that there are two different kinds of love of dress—the false kind, which thinks it's all right when it buys pretty things and hangs them on itself, and the true kind, which carefully chooses every shade of colour and every bit of material to be a frame and set-off for the wearer's particular sort of good looks. You've got the insight to see that what looks like a bit of brown holland when laid on a bed or hung on a peg may make a woman lovely enough to turn men's heads, while a confection that has cost a hundred guineas may leave everybody cold. You've only got to look around here to see that it is not the clothes that matter, but the human flesh and blood inside them. Why, one of our greatest society beauties once went through a London season with only two frocks to her name—one for day, one for evening, and both black. And yet she outshone everybody else."
We were going into the concert hall and there the figure of Death seemed to me more hideously clear than anywhere else. But I said nothing to Little Yeogh Wough of this curious oppression that was upon me. He was shyly proud of having had many prizes, and I went on talking lightly, very low, as we waited for the concert to begin.
"I think you'll know enough about women to be able to judge them well for yourself when you grow up. Look at that girl in the front row of seats with all sorts of bits of chiffon and odd ribbons about her. She has changed her position five times since we came in, trying to put herself so that everybody coming up the middle of the hall shall take notice of her. And do you see how she keeps on touching her bits of ribbon and chiffon—pulling them out or patting them down? Well, that's the kind of girl you must avoid when you're grown up. She's a prinker, and a prinker is horrible. You see, you can be quite sure even before looking at her face that she isn't very pretty, because a very pretty woman doesn't need to prink in order to try to attract notice. She attracts it too much. She would rather escape it if she could. So, when you grow up, Little Yeogh Wough, you must find a girl whose lovely head and full throat rise best from out a plain linen collar. You must avoid prinkers, just as a woman looking for a husband ought to avoid a doxer."
"Whatever is a doxer?"