like being a woman, so far as Woman
was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously.

As "David" this had been more or less her costume: an undershirt
(two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the
ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet. A shirt,
sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at
worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it. Braces
that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a
waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)--two
waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside
the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest.
Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket. On the head a hat which fitted
the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David's shock of hair).
Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves
with one button; spats--if David wanted to be very dressy--with
three buttons. On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat or
a mackintosh. If you were really dressing to kill (as a man) it
might take half an hour; if merely to go about your business and not
be specially remarked for foppishness, twenty minutes. To divest
yourself of all this and get into paijamas and so to bed: ten
minutes. But when Vivie returned to herself and went about the world
of 1909-1910, and merely wished to pass as an inconspicuous, modest
woman she had to spend _hours_ in dressing and undressing, and this
is what she had to wear and waste so much of her time in adjusting
and removing:--

Next the skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a
contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front
and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an
infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted
sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the
button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing
the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white
ribbons which preferred getting into a knot (no wonder the average
woman has a temper!). When the "combies" went to the wash, all these
ribbonlets had to be taken out, specially washed, specially ironed,
and ingeniously threaded back into position.

Next to the combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a
most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of
torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily f