The next morning Creswell called at the lodgings of his friend. “I am glad,” said he, “that you were not disappointed in Miss Grainger.”
“Disappointed!—she is the most fascinating woman I ever met with—full of sweetness, feeling, and intellect! I do not remember to have enjoyed a conversation more in my life than the one we had as I escorted her home last night”
“Why, Saybrooke! you certainly did not do that? she is unquestionably large enough to take care of herself!”
“You are an impudent dog, Creswell,” returned Saybrooke, laughing.
“But, seriously, Saybrooke, it is a great pity that Miss Grainger is so large; to a man of your sentiments, who never could see a woman over the medium height without thinking of an ogress, it must very much neutralize the effect of her unrivalled face, her winning manners, and her delightfully spirituelle conversation.”
“If you’ll oblige me by remaining civilly quiet, for a few minutes, I’ll tell you how I argued that point. I stated to myself that the larger women I had seen were as small ones examined through a magnifying glass, every defect being thus rendered more apparent. Now, I continued, here is a woman of the magnified size, without a single defect, and she is of course entitled to a magnified portion of admiration.”
“Very good.”
“And then I recollected that I was not the first who had come to such a conclusion. That Juno would not have looked the queen of Olympus had she been other than a large woman—that had the rib of Menelaus been but a small bone of contention, Troy might have been standing to this day.”
“Pshaw!” said Creswell.
“And that a man must have a very contracted imagination to fancy a little Venus De Medicis, a little Cleopatra or a little Mary Stuart.”