“It’s charming,” said Gloria, and meant it. “That’s the way I ought to look now, only more so, Holcomb said. He said I was a spoilt job.”
“Pig!”
“Oh, no. He didn’t mean it that way. He just blurted it out as if he was sorry about it. He seemed to think that I was a waste of good material and—and he was quite peeved about it and kept swearing under his breath while he was drawing me.”
“There I’m with him,” declared Gloria vigorously. “I hate waste. It’s in my Yankee blood, I suppose. And a wasted human being—that’s a sort of practical blasphemy, according to my religion.”
Darcy caught the inference. “Made in the image,” she said quickly. “But what am I made in the image of!”
“What happened to change you from this?” Gloria held up Exhibit B.
“Well, I had an illness when I was thirteen. And about then we lost our money. And my parents died a little while after. And I never seemed to get back much life or spirit or ambition or digestion or anything.”
“Can’t get hold of your own boot-straps?” queried the other suggestingly.
“Haven’t got the lifting power if I did,” answered the girl. She picked nervously at her raveled and seedy sleeve. “Lee said he believed I could look like that—the way he made me look in the picture, you know—if only some one who knew could tell me how to go about it. D’ you think maybe—p’raps—it might be just partly possible?”
Once more Gloria compared Exhibit A with Exhibit B, and then both with the original.