Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/63

 It was Mrs, Taylor's proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a mountain sheep, but tonight the likeness was further increased by a grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, " in the velvet." She wore a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.

Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time *' Mr. Taylor was taken," though there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was " taken " or quite deliberately went.

Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was anticipating matrimony with an ardor that had made the maiden one of the country's stock jokes, since the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering linen for the " hope chest " that spoke of her determined confidence in the realization of her ambition.

The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth ; Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder blades ; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.

" We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you alone?"

" I brought Katie Prentice — she's sitting over there."

" Oh ! " Mrs. Taylor's expression changed.