“They look a fair treat—they do that; what with the stockings and the shoes together. They’re such a perfect match; you couldn’t have matched ’em better, not if you’d gone to a shop to do it.” That was true enough. “And you’re well-shaped, even if you are an extra size.”
That also, from the bottom of my heart, I believed to be true; and, in my moments of most extreme despondency, I was wont to hug the conviction to my bosom. My feet might be large, but then I was large all over; they were not disproportionate; and I am almost convinced that, as Jane put it, they were well-shaped. Indeed, I will go further, and express my opinion that generally I am well-shaped. My limbs are as well moulded as any girl’s need be. I do not see why it should be such a tremendous drawback because the mould happened to be a little bit Titanic.
I bent down—I had to bend some distance—and I kissed Jane.
“You’re tremendously good to me, and I thank you awfully for lending me these very pretty shoes.”
To my amazement, she burst out crying!
CHAPTER XIV.
A QUARTER TO SEVEN
At a quarter to seven we were still in what I should describe as the throes. I daresay that sentence is not perfect English, but it is exactly what I mean; and, so long as you have that, what does it matter?
Jane had made such a mess of her crying, and I had found it so difficult to make out what the ridiculous creature was crying about; but it seemed that her young man had spoken to her with freezing coldness that very afternoon, and that, combined with the excitement of the discovery that, as she phrased it, I had put mamma’s and the girls’ noses “out of joint,” by walking off with their five young men—though you could hardly describe Major Tibbet as young—and the agitation occasioned her by my kissing her all of a sudden, had brought her to such a stage that she had to do it. So she did it, although, with all my heart, I wish she hadn’t.
Her tears, and my efforts to understand their why and their wherefore, confused things dreadfully. Some of my things we got on inside out and some we did not get on at all. When we came to my hair, it was awful. We spent about twenty minutes in getting it into a mess, and half-an-hour in getting it out; Jane’s ideas on the subject of hairdressing were so original, and, when it came to the point, quite impracticable. At last, when it seemed to me that it must nearly all have been torn out by the roots, and my scalp was sore all over, we were confronted by the fact that we had about two seconds in which to make a satisfactory job of it.
So then I took it in hand myself. I had had enough of Jane. I just gave it a twirl and a twist, and jabbed six hairpins into it, and it had to do. Jane’s opinion of the result was not enthusiastic.