Part 34 (1/2)

”Thin!” said Dolly. ”Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that _I_ should grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia Howland's, Phemie?” And she ended with a little laugh.

Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.

”Oh, dear, no!” she said. ”They could n't, you know. They are not the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look here,” and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand without the ring. ”There are no dimples here now, Dolly,” she said, sorrowfully.

”No,” answered Dolly, simply; and the next minute, as she drew her hand away, there fluttered from her lips a sigh.

She managed to change the turn of conversation after this. Miss MacDowlas had good-naturedly left them alone, and so she began to ask Phemie questions,--questions about school and lessons and companions, about the lady princ.i.p.al and the under-teachers and about the professor with the lumpy face; and, despite appearances being against her, there was still the old ring in her girl's jests.

”Has madame got a new bonnet yet,” she asked, ”or does she still wear the old one with those aggressive-looking spikes of wheat in it? The lean ears ought to have eaten up the fat ones by this time.”

”But they have n't,” returned Phemie. ”They are there yet, Dolly. Just the same spikes in the same bonnet, only she has had new saffron-colored ribbon put on it, just the shade of her skin.”

Dolly shuddered,--Lady Augusta's own semi-tragic shudder, if Phemie had only recognized it.

”Phemie,” she said, with a touch of pardonable anxiety, ”ill as I look, I am not that color, am I? To lose one's figure and grow thin is bad enough, but to become like Madame Pillet--dear me!” shaking her head. ”I scarcely think I could reconcile myself to existence.”

Phemie laughed. ”You are not changed in one respect, Dolly,” she said.

”When I hear you talk it makes me feel quite--quite safe.”

”Safe!” Dolly echoed. ”You mean to say that so long as I preserve my const.i.tutional vanity, your anxiety won't overpower you. But--but,”

looking at her curiously, ”did you think at first that I was not safe, as you call it?”

”You looked so ill,” faltered Phemie. ”And--I was so startled.”

”Were you?” asked Dolly. ”Did I shock you?”

”A little--only just a little, dear,” deprecatingly.

Then strangely enough fell upon them a silence. Dolly turned toward the window, and her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon some far-away point, as if she was pondering over a new train of thought. And when at last she spoke, her voice was touched with the tremulous unsteadiness of tears.

”Do you think,” she said, slowly,--”do you think that _any one_ who had loved me would be shocked to see me now? Am I so much altered as that? One scarcely sees these things one's self,--they come to pa.s.s so gradually.”

All poor Phemie's smiles died away.

”Don't let us talk about it,” she pleaded. ”I cannot bear to hear you speak so. Don't, dear--if you please, don't!”

Her pain was so evident that it roused Dolly at once.

”I won't, if it troubles you,” she said, almost in her natural manner.

”It does not matter,--why should it? There is no one here to be shocked.

I was only wondering.”

But the shadow did not quite leave her face, and even when, an hour later, Euphemia bade her good-by and left her, promising to return again as soon as possible, it was there still.

She was very, very quiet for a few minutes after she found herself alone. She clasped her hands behind her head, and lay back in the light chair, looking out of the window. She was thinking so deeply that she did not even stir for a while; but in the end she got up, as though moved by some impulse, and crossed the room.