as ashamed of them.

Instead of the slender things which seem as if a sudden strain would
snap them, and are nothing but mere bone, she had a pair of well-shaped
ankles, justly proportioned to what would soon be a fine form; strong,
but neither thick, nor coarse, nor heavy, ankles that would carry her
many a mile without weariness, that ended good legs with plenty of flesh
on them. The stupidity of calling such coarse or heavy! They were really
ideal ankles, such as a sculptor would carve. Yet these ill-instructed
girls called them coarse! It was not their fault, it was the lack of
instruction; as they did not know what was physically perfect, of course
they could not recognize it.

Let every girl who has such ankles be proud of them, for they will prove
a blessing to her for the whole of her life.

Amaryllis could not get her hair smooth, though she brushed it for some
time; it would not lie close, so much had the east wind dried it. She
opened a drawer, and took out a little bottle of macassar, and held it
in her hand, balancing probabilities. Would her father see it if she
used it, or might he, perhaps, fail to notice? She dared not leave the
bottle on the dressing-table, for if he had chanced to pass through the
room he would certainly have thrown it out of window, so bitter was his
antagonism to all oils and perfumes, scents, pomades, and other
resources of the hairdresser, which he held defiled the hair and ruined
it, to the deception of woman and the disgust of man. Not one drop of
scent did Amaryllis dare to sprinkle on her handkerchief, not one drop
of oil did she dare put on her beautiful hair unless surreptitiously,
and then she could not go near him, for he was certain to detect it and
scorch her with withering satire.

Yet, however satirized, feminine faith in perfumes and oils and so forth
is like a perennial spring, and never fails.

Such splendid hair as Amaryllis possessed needed no dressing--nothing
could possibly improve it, and the chances therefore were that whatever
she used would injure--yet in her heart she yearned to rub it with oil.

But the more she considered the more probable it seemed that her father
would detect her; she had better wait till he went out for the afternoon
somewhere, an event that seldom occurred, for Iden was one of those who
preferred working at home to rambling abroad. He was, indeed, too
attached to his home work. So she returned the bottle to the drawer, and
hid i