Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/70

62 Jack and me as odd that, when we do come across our sisters, all the black, grey, and blue coats belonging to the youth abiding in and sojourning at Periwinkle should be in their immediate neighbourhood. But then Alice is so lovely; who can help liking to look at her? The very girls turn and stare at her with that grudging, unwilling, breathless interest, that I am already learning to know is the highest compliment one woman can pay another, and which I shall never, never wring from any of my own sex. I may even fall to the degradation of being called "nice looking" by them.

Alice looks demure as a nun; and how can the pretty soul help it if rude men will stare at and follow her about? All I know is I love to look at what is pleasant to the eye; and if I had been born comely should have carried about a pocket-mirror with me, and refreshed my eyes with a sight of my charms every five minutes, while nobody would ever have admired me half as heartily and appreciatingly as I should have admired myself.

is nine o'clock, and I am making my toilet for the night, and smiling to myself at a ridiculous story Jack told me just now about an old sailor down here. He would like to be devout, but has not time to save his soul, so has copied out the longest and finest prayer he knows of, and pinned it over his bedstead, and every night and morning, when he turns in and turns out, he looks towards it and says, "Thim's my sintiments, O Lord!" I have time, plenty, so there is no fear of my following his example. As