on the verge of tears.

Cissy's quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to
Edy Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentleman
couldn't see and to mind he didn't wet his new tan shoes.

But who was Gerty?

Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought,
gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen
of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was pronounced
beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said, she was
more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and graceful,
inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had been taking
of late had done her a world of good much better than the Widow Welch's
female pills and she was much better of those discharges she used to
get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face was almost
spiritual in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine
Cupid's bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely veined alabaster
with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice and queen of ointments
could make them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves
in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple told that once to
Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black out at daggers drawn
with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their little tiffs from time to
time like the rest of mortals) and she told her not to let on whatever
she did that it was her that told her or she'd never speak to her
again. No. Honour where honour is due. There was an innate refinement,
a languid queenly _hauteur_ about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced
in her delicate hands and higharched instep. Had kind fate but willed
her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in her own right and had
she only received the benefit of a good education Gerty MacDowell might
easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen
herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician suitors
at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her.
Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that lent to her
softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed meaning,
that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes, a charm
few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery? Gerty's were of
the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive
brows. Time was when those brows wer