Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/80

 “Miss Potter said I was a flirt. This is wholly untrue, so I won’t discuss it. But she also said I ‘made eyes.’ Now do I? I don’t mean to—I know that; but it seems you can ‘make eyes’ without being conscious of it, so how am I going to prevent that? I can’t go about all the days of my life with my eyes dropped down. Dean said the other day:

“‘When you look at me like that, Star, there is nothing for me but to do as you ask.’

“And Aunt Elizabeth was quite annoyed last week because she said I was looking ‘improperly’ at Perry when I was coaxing him to go to the Sunday School picnic. (Perry hates Sunday School picnics.)

“Now, in both cases I thought I was only looking.

“Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I wasn’t pretty. Is that true?”

Emily laid down her pen, went over to the mirror and took a “dispassionate” stock of her looks. Black of hair—smoke-purple of eye—crimson of lip. So far, not bad. Her forehead was too high, but the new way of doing her hair obviated that defect. Her skin was very white and her cheeks, which had been so pale in childhood, were now as delicately hued as a pink pearl. Her mouth was too large, but her teeth were good. Her slightly pointed ears gave her a fawn-like charm. Her neck had lines that she could not help liking. Her slender, immature figure was graceful; she knew, for Aunt Nancy had told her, that she had the Shipley ankle and instep. Emily looked very earnestly at Emily-in-the-Glass from several angles, and returned to her diary.

“I have decided that I am not pretty,” she wrote. “I think I quite pretty when my hair is done a certain way, but a really pretty girl would be pretty no matter how her hair was done, so Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was right. But I feel sure that I am not so plain as she implied, either.

“Then she said I was sly—and. I don’t think it is any fault to be ‘deep,’ though she spoke as if she thought