Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/184

 kind of "impression" of which she herself, for all her success, would never learn the secret.

Of the whole company only Girlie, with her defective focusing apparatus, had failed to pay immediate homage. In a pretty white dress, she had perfunctorily acknowledged Aunt Denise's graciousness and begun to turn away, when the old lady transfixed her with relentless black eyes. "I suppose it is the fashion to walk with a bend nowadays," Aunt Denise had said. "It doesn't give the lungs a chance."

Girlie had blushed and straightened, but Aunt Denise had withdrawn her eyes and turned them more charitably on little Mrs. Brown.

A stock soup had been simmering on the back of the stove for two weeks. By the time she had tasted it, and found it perfect, Louise's spirits were at their highest voltage, and her eyes flashed down the table till they encountered Miriam's, which gave back a signal of felicitation. Miriam, between Dare and Jack Wallace, was beating time to an argument sustained by Lord Eveley and Pearl Beatty against Mr. Windrom and Amy Sweet, the latter lending her aid in the form of giggles, for which three sips of wine,—the first in her life, and drunk in open contempt of the pledge Mrs. Boots had once persuaded her to sign,—were responsible.

Aunt Denise was getting acquainted with Keble, treating him with a respect that struck Louise as being inherently French. She wondered whether