Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/145

 seemed that a miracle alone had saved the seams from bursting.

"Huh!" he sighed, "I cannot breathe. This is less humane than hanging."

"But not so ignominious," says I.

"Well, I wouldn't be too sure of that," says he. "For surely 'tis of the very depth of degradation for a lusty man like me to be put in petticoats, and made a woman of."

"Wretch!" says I. Mrs. Polly Emblem, being employed at that moment in pinning a gold brooch into the collar of his bodice, by misadventure stuck it cleverly in his throat.

We made him a bust with a pad of wool. His hair was a matter for nice consideration. He wore it long, and of a yellow colour; and, although of a coarse male quality, it was profuse enough to occupy his shoulders. Emblem, however, was a past mistress in the manipulation of a head-dress. It shook me with laughter, yet thrilled me with pleasure too, to witness the degree of mastery with which she seized that ungovernable mane, that was no more curly than is a grey rat's tail, and twisted it to her own devices. She packed it up with pins and divers arts known only to the coiffeuse, enclosed it in one of my commodes, and made the whole of such a height and imperial proportion that even I would not have disdained to wear it publicly.

There now remained the question of his tell-tale hands and feet. But the difficulties they presented