Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/147

 Emblem, most enthusiastic in the cause, brimful of mirth, and with a pardonable vanity in her own accomplished hand, worked out these details to a miracle. A touch or two and Venus was superseded.

He looked into the mirror, and saw his image there, and kissed the glass to show how deeply the picture there presented had wrought upon his susceptibilities.

"A deuced fine girl!" says he. "Faith! I think I'll marry her!"

"You are wedded to her for a day or two, at least," says I.

The lad made the most charming picture. Those rare eyes of his were roving in a very saucy way; his features were alert and delicate, yet strong, and emphasized in delightful fashion by Mrs. Polly Emblem's inimitable art. His clothes were very cunningly contrived, and he had a graceful ease of person that in a measure disguised the absence of soft curves. Besides, that enormous hoop petticoat was very much his friend, as it stood so far off from his natural figure that it created a shape of its own accord.

"My dearest Prue, how are you?" cries I with warmth, and pretending to embrace him.

"So my name is Prue?" says he, "a proper name, I vow."

"Then 'ware lest you soil it with an impropriety," says I, disapproving highly of the way in which he walked. "You are to impersonate my