Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/62

 resist leaning over and putting the dingy little bonnet straight on the grandmotherly head. A wonderful old soldier this venerable woman was! There was no shade of bitterness in her voice as she referred to the vulgar little boys and her unemancipated great-niece. When she lay in her coffin with her skirts 'to the floor,' one could imagine her dowdy old spirit looking down and chuckling that at last the joke had been on her.

And it was true. Clothes, the great hoopskirts, the heavy shawls took so much strength to carry. Lanice bent her body inside of all her wrappings. There it was, a thin white sliver as supple as a willow twig. Why, indeed, should it be burdened and bound? Suddenly the long rings she wore in her ears dragged upon her.

Pauline found some difficulty in calling the meeting to order, but finally rapped so loudly with her improvised gavel that every one jumped and subsided guiltily into her chair.

'Ladies, and you few, kind, generous gentlemen. We have gathered here to-night...'

Pauline was already breathless, but the meeting was off. Lanice, sitting alone in the crimson-curtained bow window at the back of the improvised hall, felt again a generous impulse to help. The women seemed pitiful, and yet so frankly ugly. Why was it necessary to wear such hideous clothes? Their feet, too, their awkward hands, vaguely irritated her collectively, although individually so many were kind and admirable, like dear old Miss Spence.