she had thrown aside her loose
woolly coat, and the narrow furs that were no softer than her own fair
skin. Flung back into a deep chair, and relaxed after her vigorous day,
she looked peculiarly childish and charming, her grandmother thought.
She was like both her aunts, with Annie's fair, almost ashen hair and
Alice's full, pretty mouth. But she was more squarely built than either,
and a hint of a tip, at the end of her nose, gave her an expression at
once infantile and astonished. When Leslie opened her blue eyes widely,
and stared at anything, she looked like an amazed baby, and the effect
of her round eyes and tilted nose was augmented by her very fair skin,
and by just a sixteenth of an inch shortness in her upper lip. Of course
she knew all this. Her acquaintance with her own good and bad points had
begun in school days, and while through her grandmother's care her
teeth were being straightened, and her eyes and throat subjected to mild
forms of surgery, her Aunt Annie had seen to it that her masses of fair
hair had been burnished and groomed, her hands scraped and polished into
beauty, and finally that her weight was watched with scrupulous care.
Nature had perhaps intended Leslie to be plump and ruddy, but modern
fashion had decreed otherwise, and, with half the girls of her own age
and set, Leslie took saccharine in her tea, rarely touched sweets or
fried food, and had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that she was
actually too slim and too willowy for her height, and interestingly
colourless into the bargain.

Could Acton possibly have said anything definite to start this unusual
train of thought, the grandmother speculated. With Leslie so
felicitously married, she would have felt ready for her _nunc dimittis_.
She watched Leslie expectantly. But the girl was apparently dreaming,
and was staring absently at the tip of one sturdy oxford above which a
stretch of thick white woollen stocking was visible almost to her knee.

"How can they fall in love with them, dressed like Welsh peasants!" the
grandmother said to herself, in mild disapproval. And aloud she said:
"Ah, don't, lovey!"

For Leslie had taken out a small gold case, and was regarding it
thoughtfully.

"My first to-day, on my honour!" Leslie said, as she lazily lighted a
sweet-scented cigarette. It never occurred to her to pay any attention
to her grandmother's protest, for Grandmother had been regularly
protesting against everything Leslie had