Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/14

 language.' He spat fluently and accurately against the belly of the red-hot stove.

'Ugh,' thought Lanice, and wrapped her costly furs about her. She was quite alone now in the cold, far end of the coach close to the ill-fitting door and empty ice-water tank. The seat upon which she sat had been designed for two, but her skirts of fine, pale wool and brown velvet filled this space and flowed out into the aisle. She looked down and saw the points of her bronze slippers resting side by side upon the dirty floor, exactly as a lady's shoes should rest, and smiled a lingering and secret smile. Exactly as a lady's shoes should rest...no one would guess that they were empty and that her feet were drawn up under her warm body. She herself was nestled inside her formidable shell of clothing as snug and compact as a worm at the heart of a chestnut. The hoops and crinoline hid how she really sat and what she really was.

No one would have guessed that this elegant and exotic creature had any legs, or, if she were so carnal as to possess such things, that they could bend so subtly beneath her. Long ago, when first out of pantalettes, she had learned this trick of taking her ease and preserving her dignity during the protracted dull sermons in the Congregational Church in Amherst. To the man who hoped that the cold would eventually drive her to share the fire he so laboriously tended, she seemed only a pale, oval face with tightly tied red mouth and black lacquer eyes. Occasionally two alabaster hands emerged delicately from the