“Never; but the bands are feather-stitched round the neck.”
Grizel adopted an air of severity.
“I call it immoral. I shall speak to the Vicar. No woman can be self-respecting in a calico band!... Well! can I cut out a piece and join it to itself? Its against my principles to let it bag.”
“Mrs Beverley, it won’t bag! It might with you. That’s different. Of course if it were for you—”
Grizel’s eyes opened in a round-eyed stare.
“Aren’t they the same shape as I am?”
Miss Bruce made an unexpected answer. She looked the bride over, taking in the graceful lines of the beautiful body which had the slightness of a fay, an almost incredible slightness, but which was yet so rounded and supple that by no possibility could it have been called thin... She looked, and she shook her head.
“No, Mrs Beverley,” she said firmly. “They are not.”
Grizel sewed industriously all afternoon, and on departing exhibited an exquisitely neat seam for Mrs Evans’s inspection.
“Never say I can’t sew!” she said complacently. “This afternoon has taken me back to my childhood, when I used to hem handkerchiefs and bits of finger at the same time.” She pointed dramatically to a small red stain in the middle of the seam. “In more ways than one. Human gore! Isn’t it piteous?”