ay I could look all right with a fan--a big fan of
ostrich feathers." This time she faced the image directly and almost
gloatingly, as if it were food. "But considering my circumstances, that
is a wild hypothesis. I suppose ... I ... am ... all right. But I
suppose I'm just good-looking for a private person. I'd look the
plainest of the plain beside Zena or Phyllis Dare. Would I not? Would I
not?"

"You'd look plain beside no one but Venus," said Mr. Mactavish James,
"and her you'd better with your tongue."

"Ah!" She breathed deeply, as if at last she drank. "So it doesn't
matter my chin being so wee? I've always hankered after a chin like
Carson's. I think it makes one looked up to, irrespective of one's
merits. But if what you say is true I've no call to worry. I'll do as I
am." She shot an intense scowling glance at the old man. "You're sure
I'll do?"

"Ay, lass, you'll do," he answered gravely.

She burst into a light peal of laughter, as different from her usual
mirth as if she had been changed from gold to silver. "Oh dear! Oh
dear!" she cried, her voice suddenly high-pitched and femininely gay.
"What nonsense we're talking! Do--for what? It's all pairfectly
ridiculous--as if looks mattered one way or another!" An animation of so
physical a nature had come on her that her heart was beating almost too
quickly for speech, and her body, being uncontrolled by her spirit,
abandoned itself to entirely uncharacteristic gestures which were but
abstract designs drawn by her womanhood. She lifted her face towards the
mirror and pouted her lips mockingly, as if she knew that some spirit
buried in its glassy depths desired to kiss them and could not. She
stood on her toes on the hard wooden seat, so that it looked as if she
were wearing high heels, and her hands, which were less like paws than
they had ever been before, because she was holding them with
consciousness of her fingers' extreme length, took the skirt of her
frock and pulled it into panniers. She wished that she were clad in
silk! But that lent no wistfulness to her face, which now glittered with
a solemn and joyful rapacity, for her unconscious being had divined that
there were before her many victories to be gained wholly without sweat
of the will. "Ah!" she sighed, and wondered at her over-contentment; and
then went on with her delicate shrill chatter, glowing and holding
herself with a fine frivolity that made it seem almost as if she were
clad in silk,