pretty enough, and her dark
eyes were good, but she seemed to carry almost the years of her mother.
She was an earnest girl, severe in thought, concerned about her culture,
seeking to subdue a nature which she profoundly distrusted to an ideal
she would have described as one of elegance and refinement. The dress
she wore was one of her best--for an exemplary young man would call
that evening, bringing his choice silver flute upon which he would play
justly if not brilliantly to Winona's piano accompaniment--but it was
dull of tint, one of her mother's plain, not fancy, creations. Still
Winona felt it was daring, because the collar was low and sported a
fichu of lace. This troubled her, even as she renewed the earnest effort
to know Matthew Arnold. She doubtfully fingered at her throat a tiny
chain that supported a tiny pendant. She slipped the thing under the
neck of her waist. She feared that with her low neck--she thought of it
as low--the bauble would be flashy.

Mrs. Penniman came from the kitchen and sat on the porch steps. She was
much like Winona, except that certain professional touches of colour at
waist, neck, and wrists made her appear, in spirit at least, the younger
woman. There were times when Winona suffered herself to doubt her
mother's seriousness; times when the woman appeared a slave to levity.
She would laugh at things Winona considered no laughing matters, and her
sympathy with her ailing husband had come to be callous and matter of
fact, almost perfunctory. She longed, moreover, to do fancy dressmaking
for her child; and there was the matter of the silk stockings. The
Christmas before the too downright Dave Cowan, in a low spirit of
banter, had gifted Winona with these. They were of tan silk, and Dave
had challenged her to wear them for the good of her soul.

Winona had been quite unpleasantly shocked at Dave's indelicacy, but her
mother had been frivolous throughout the affair. Her mother said, too,
that she would like to wear silk stockings at all times. But Winona--she
spoke of the gift as hose--put the sinister things away at the bottom of
her third bureau drawer. Once, indeed, she had nearly nerved herself to
a public appearance in them, knowing that perfectly good women often did
this. That had been the day she was to read her paper on Early Greek
Sculpture at the Entre Nous Club. She had put them on with her new tan
pumps, but the effect had been too daring. She felt the ogling eyes.
The st