Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/80



was a dull grey morning in December; the two friends who were to start Reformed Horseback stood before the fire in the vicarage drawing-room, dressed exactly according to Mr Bristley’s design already described. Lesbia showed to the better advantage, because her waist had never been pinched in by, stays, nor her feet by shoes which jam the great and little toe together into a point like a well-cut cedar pencil, still less by those abominable stilt heels which torture the foot into the shape of an inverted U. Poor Letitia Blemmyketts had undergone all these barbarities, but nevertheless she contemplated the rounded robust figure of her athletic young friend with an admiration unmixed with any of that jealousy an inferior mind might have felt.

‘I congratulate you on your figure, love,’ she said. ‘I see you have never been waspified,—wish I hadn’t!’

‘Never been what, Letty?’

‘Waspified; your waist squeezed in like a wasp’s by those cussed stays. The waspification of girls by tight lacing is the ruin of their bodies, as ‘weakervesselism’ is the ruin of their minds. Good-morning, Mr Bristley; you find me just spitefully envious of this young beauty of yours. I guess she could digest a boa-constrictor, and guess a boa-constrictor couldn’t digest me: my hips are too sharp.’