“Now, if you could only wear them outside, and them wretched, shabby old dresses underneath, that would be something like. It’s a pity, miss, you can’t. Things like them is not meant to be hidden. About them scarlet stockings. As it just happens, I’ve got a pair of scarlet shoes. They was given me by a lady friend for whom they was too large, and they’re a bit too big for me. But they’re about the shade; and I should think, with a little management, they might fit you.”
Some persons might resent such a remark as that. It did not sound complimentary. But I am too well aware that I am, in all respects, beyond the ordinary size of a woman, to be much affected by allusions to the fact. What I did not relish was the notion of getting into shoes which had been transferred from that lady friend to Jane. I wondered dimly what mamma and the girls would say, if it ever came to their ears that such a suggestion had been made. But Jane would listen to nothing. She seemed to have made up her mind to see me through—and see me through she would. Off she went to get those shoes.
So soon as she was gone I meditated a plan for preventing her return. I did not want her shoes, and I did not want her assistance either. I was beginning to be fearful that I should be a bigger fright with her aid than without it. Had there been a key in the door, it would have been easy. But there was not. My bedroom lacked a good many things, one of them being a means of securing it against intruders. It was at the top of the house, right away from the others, on the same floor as the servants’; so that Jane had but to slip through my door, and across to hers.
I did think of putting my foot against the door, and keeping her out like that; but it would have been a brusque method of proceeding, and might have hurt her feelings. After all, she meant well; and, as I have said, so few people ever did mean well towards me, that I found it exceedingly difficult to thwart them when the mood was on them.
Some minutes elapsed before Jane returned. When she did, I was really not in a condition of costume to offer effective resistance of any kind. Time was passing. Mr Hammond had emphasised his request that I would not keep them waiting, but that I would be ready at a quarter to seven; so I was beginning to make as much haste as I could. Besides, I had a sort of feeling that it might be just as well to get through, at least, the initiatory stages, before Jane appeared; her observations did lean so strongly towards the side of candour.
When she entered I was conscious of what I believe people call a qualm, though just what kind of qualm it was, I am not prepared to positively assert. She had not only in her hands a pair of scarlet shoes, but her arms were heaped up with what I had an intuitive perception were assorted specimens of her wardrobe. Did she propose to array me in her splendours? Was I to sally forth with five gentlemen to dinner in Jane’s attire? Were her clothes to flit from seat to seat in the Gaiety Theatre? Did she suppose that any of them would fit me; I was a head taller than she was? Her figure was what I should have described as weedy; I daresay she considered it elegant. My chest was as broad as a grenadier’s—horribly broad! Were not mamma and the girls intimately acquainted with nearly every article of clothing I possessed? Would they not instantly detect upon me the presence of an unaccustomed thing? Would not inquiries be promptly instituted as to where I got it from? Could I answer—Jane?
That she was totally without suspicion that such questions could be chasing each other through my bosom, her observations quickly showed.
“I think that, between us, miss, we shall make you look something like.”
I had no doubt of that whatever; it was that which racked me.
“It isn’t often that you do go out with five gentlemen, all at once, nor anyone else, for the matter of that; so that when you do go, it’s just as well that them five gentlemen should know that they’ve got someone with ’em as everyone was looking at.”