And the Mamise that awaited the belated Davidge was also in a state of tangled wits. She, too, had dressed with a finikin care, as Davidge had, neither of them stopping to think how quaint a custom it is for people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for each other’s examination. Nature dresses the birds in the mating season. Mankind with the 227 aid of the dressmaker and the haberdasher plumes up at will.
But as Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Davidge his Larrey, so Mamise had her sister Abbie.
Abbie came in unexpectedly and regarded Mamise’s costume with no illusions except her own cynical ones:
“What you all diked up about?”
Mamise shrugged her eyebrows, her lips, and her shoulders.
Abbie guessed. “That man comin’?”
Mamise repeated her previous business.
“Kind of low neck, don’t you think? And your arms nekked.”
Mamise drew over her arms a scarf that gave them color rather than concealment. Abbie scorned the subterfuge.
“Do you think it’s proper to dress like that for a man to come callin’?”