“Yes,” said she. “I looked at myself in my glass just before I came and I thought I did not look well.”
“Hideous,” said Margaret.
Annie smiled agreement and looked pretty, despite the fact that her hair was strained tightly back, showing too much of her intellectual forehead, and the colour of her gown killed all the pink bloom lights in her face. Annie Eustace had a beautiful soul and it showed forth triumphant over all bodily accessories, in her smile.
“You are not doing that embroidery at all well,” said Margaret.
Annie laughed. “I know it,” she said with a sort of meek amusement. “I don't think I ever can master long and short stitch.”
“Why on earth do you attempt it then?”
“Everybody embroiders,” replied Annie. She did not state that her grandmother had made taking the embroidery a condition of her call upon her friend.
Margaret continued to regard her. She was finding a species of salve for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. “What does make you wear that hair ring?” said she.
“It was a present,” replied Annie humbly, but she for the first time looked a little disturbed. That mourning emblem with her father's and mother's, and a departed sister's hair in a neat little twist under a small crystal, grated upon her incessantly. It struck her as a species of ghastly sentiment, which at once distressed, and impelled her to hysterical mirth.
“A present,” repeated Margaret. “If anybody gave me such a present as that, I would never wear it. It is simply in shocking bad taste.”