Miss Reeves went a good deal further.
"And such heels! My dear girl"--fancy her calling me her "dear girl," such impertinence!--"sane people don't wear those royal roads to deformity nowadays--they wear shoes like these."
She displayed a pair of huge, square-toed, shapeless, heelless, thick-soled monstrosities, into which nothing would ever have induced me to put my feet. I said so plainly.
"Then I'm glad that I am not sane. Sooner than wear things like that, I'd go about in my stockings. I don't believe that mine are royal, or any other, roads to deformity, they fit me beautifully; but, at anyrate, yours are deformities ready-made."
I did not intend to allow myself to be snubbed by Miss Reeves without a struggle. She was no relative of Philip's. But she might just as well have been; because, with one accord, they all proceeded to take her part.
"My dear Molly," said Margaret, speaking as if hers were the last words which could be said, "you are wrong. In shoes like yours you're a prisoner. You mayn't be conscious of it; and you won't be till you try others. Then you'll find out, and you'll be sorry that you didn't find out before. I want to be mistress of my feet; I don't want to be their servant. I wear shoes like Pat, and nothing would induce me to wear any other kind--I know better."
"And I," echoed her mother and sister.
There they were, all three displaying--with actual gusto!--shoes which were facsimiles of those worn by Miss Reeves. They were probably the productions of the same expert in ugliness.
"You won't be able to do anything really comfortably till you wear them too; then you'll tell yourself what a goose you were not to have gone in for them ages ago. But you'll find Philip'll soon win you into the ways of wisdom."
Philip would? I should like to see Philip even dare to try. If I could not wear--without argument--shoes to please myself, then--