and slanting a little down toward her nose. Her forehead under its
burnt-brown hair was candid; her firm little chin just dimpled.
Altogether, a face difficult to take one's eyes off. But Nedda was far
from vain, and her face seemed to her too short and broad, her eyes too
dark and indeterminate, neither gray nor brown. The straightness of her
nose was certainly comforting, but it, too, was short. Being creamy in
the throat and browning easily, she would have liked to be marble-white,
with blue dreamy eyes and fair hair, or else like a Madonna. And was she
tall enough? Only five foot five. And her arms were too thin. The only
things that gave her perfect satisfaction were her legs, which, of
course, she could not at the moment see; they really WERE rather jolly!
Then, in a panic, fearing to be late, she turned and ran out, fluttering
into the maze of stairs and corridors.

CHAPTER VI

Clara, Mrs. Stanley Freeland, was not a narrow woman either in mind
or body; and years ago, soon indeed after she married Stanley, she had
declared her intention of taking up her sister-in-law, Kirsteen, in
spite of what she had heard were the woman's extraordinary notions.
Those were the days of carriages, pairs, coachmen, grooms, and, with her
usual promptitude, ordering out the lot, she had set forth. It is safe
to say she had never forgotten that experience.

Imagine an old, white, timbered cottage with a thatched roof, and no
single line about it quite straight. A cottage crazy with age, buried
up to the thatch in sweetbrier, creepers, honeysuckle, and perched high
above crossroads. A cottage almost unapproachable for beehives and their
bees--an insect for which Clara had an aversion. Imagine on the rough,
pebbled approach to the door of this cottage (and Clara had on thin
shoes) a peculiar cradle with a dark-eyed baby that was staring placidly
at two bees sleeping on a coverlet made of a rough linen such as Clara
had never before seen. Imagine an absolutely naked little girl of three,
sitting in a tub of sunlight in the very doorway. Clara had turned
swiftly and closed the wicket gate between the pebbled pathway and the
mossed steps that led down to where her coachman and her footman were
sitting very still, as was the habit of those people. She had perceived
at once that she was making no common call. Then, with real courage she
had advanced, and, looking down at the little girl with a fearful smile,
had tickled the door with