Part 1 (2/2)

A figure moved like a shadow in the depths of one of the rooms in the house opposite, and Norah leaned a little farther out of the window to catch more sunbeams for her hair; but when the figure came into full view she was disgusted to find it was only the servant, who flapped a duster and withdrew without a glance at herself. ”If father persists in keeping me hidden away in West Kensington,” she grumbled, ”he can't expect me to marry a duke. No, I'm eighteen, and I'll marry Wilfred--at least I'll marry him when he can afford to be married, but meanwhile I _will_ be engaged. I'm tired of all this deception.” Norah was pondering the virtue of frankness, when she heard a step behind her and, turning round, saw her mother's wonted expression of anxiety and mild disapproval.

”Oh well,” said Norah, quickly, to antic.i.p.ate the reproach on her lips, ”this is the only place I can dry my hair. And, mother, I can't wait any longer to be engaged to Wilfred. I'm going to have it out with father to-night.”

Mrs. Caffyn looked frightened, which was what Norah intended, for she felt in no mood to argue the propriety of sitting at an open window with her hair down, and had deliberately introduced the larger issue.

”My dear child, I hope you will do nothing of the kind. Father has been very worried during the last month by that horrid theater advertis.e.m.e.nt which upset Canon Wilbraham so much, and he won't be at all in the right mood.”

Norah sighed patiently, avoided pouting, because she had been warned by a girl friend whose opinion she valued against spoiling the shape of her mouth, and with a shrug of her shoulders turned away and went on brus.h.i.+ng her hair.

”My dear child,” Mrs. Caffyn began, deprecatingly.

”Oh well, I can't sit in any other room! Besides, the kids are playing down below, and I can't keep an eye on them from anywhere else as well as I can from here.”

”Playing in the front garden?” repeated Mrs. Caffyn, anxiously.

Anything positive done by any of her children always made her anxious, and she hurried across to the window to call down to them. The two little girls had managed to smear themselves from head to foot with grimy garden-mold, and most unreasonably Mrs. Caffyn could not see that their grubbiness was of no importance compared with the question of whether Norah's hair was not always exactly the color of mignonette buds. She began to admonish them from the window, and they defended themselves against her reproaches by calling upon their eldest sister to testify that what they had done they had done with her acquiescence, since she had not uttered a word against their behavior. Norah declared that she could not possibly go down-stairs without undoing all the good of her shampoo, and in the end Mrs. Caffyn, after ringing ineffectually for her second daughter or one of the servants, had to go down herself and rescue Gladys and Marjorie from the temptations of the front garden.

”Thank Heaven for a little peace,” sighed Norah to herself. She sat there in a delicious paradise of self-esteem and, looking at herself in the gla.s.s, was so much thrilled in the contemplation of her own beauty that she forgot all about her engagement, all about the lack of spectators, all about everything except the way her features conformed to what in women she most admired. She thought compa.s.sionately of her mother's faded fairness, and wondered with a frown of esthetic concern why her mother's face was so downy. If her own chin began to show signs of fluffing over like that, she would spend her last halfpenny on removing hairs that actually in some lights glistened like a smear of honey; luckily there was nothing in her own face that she wanted to change. Her mother must have been pretty once, but never more than pretty, because she had blue eyes. How glad she was that with her light hair went deep brown eyes instead of commonplace blue eyes, and that her mouth instead of being rather full and indefinite was a firm bow the beauty of which did not depend upon the freshness of youth. Not that she need fear even the far-off formidable thirties with such a complexion and such teeth. Apart from superfluous hairs her mother's complexion was still good, and even her father had white teeth. Her own nose, straight and small, was neither so straight nor so small as to be insipid, and her chin, tapering exquisitely, was cleft, not dimpled.

Dimples seemed to Norah vulgar, and she could not imagine why they were ever considered worthy of admiration. No, with all her perfection of color and form she was mercifully free from the least suggestion of ”dolliness”; she was too tall, and had much too good a figure ever to run any risk of that.

”I'm really more beautiful even than I thought, now that I'm looking at myself very critically. And, of course, I shall get more beautiful, especially when I've found out what way my hair suits me best. I shall make all sorts of experiments with it. There's bound to be one way that suits me better than others, if only it isn't too unfas.h.i.+onable. I suppose father hopes secretly that I shall make a brilliant marriage, because even he must realize that I am exceptionally beautiful.”

She played condescendingly with the notion of being able to announce that she was engaged to a viscount, and imagined with what awe the family would receive the news.

”However, that's my affair,” she decided. ”It's not likely father will bring back a viscount to supper. Besides, I'm not mercenary, and if I choose to love a poor man I will. My looks were given to me, not to father, and if he thinks he's going to get the benefit of them he's made a great mistake.”

Norah's meditations were suddenly interrupted by the entrance of her sister Dorothy, a dark, pleasant, practical girl of sixteen, who was already so much interested in household affairs that Norah feared her indifference to dress was due to something more than immaturity, was indeed the outcome of an ineradicable propensity toward dowdiness.

”I wish you wouldn't burst into rooms like that,” she protested, crossly.

But Dorothy only hummed round the room in search of what she was looking for, and paid no more attention to her elder sister than a bee would have done.

”And if you've got to come up-stairs to our room when you're in the middle of cooking,” Norah went on, ”you might at least wipe your hands and your arms first. You're covering everything with flour,” she grumbled.

”That's better than covering it with powder,” retorted Dorothy.

”What a silly remark!”

”Is it, my dear? Sorry the cap fits so well.”

Norah turned away from this obtrusive sister in disdain, asking herself for perhaps the thousandth time what purpose in life she was possibly intended to serve. Apart from the fact that she was dark and distinctly not even good-looking, there seemed no excuse for Dorothy's existence, and Norah made up her mind that she would not bother any more about trying to make her dress with good taste; it simply was not worth while.

”Eureka!” cried Dorothy, triumphantly waving an egg-beater.

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