Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/169

Rh "I was frightened at the thought of visiting a stranger. But I needn't have been. Mrs. Morrison was perfectly lovely to me!"

"Oh, she was, was she? How?"

"Just every way there is to be lovely. For one thing—she thought I had lovely clothes, and that you had awfully good taste. She said so. She talked about you, mother. She thought you must be simply beautiful when I told her what you looked like."

"What does she look like?"

"A little like an Indian Pipe," said Laurel reflectively. "That's a sort of flower that grows in dark places up in the Maine woods. It hasn't got any color at all."

"Oh, gracious. I mean is she tall or short, dark or light, fat or thin. I don't care what kind of a flower she looks like."

"Well," Laurel began slowly, methodically. "She's dark—at least her hair is—and tall—at least she looks tall until you see her beside somebody taller like father—and slim, and cool-looking and pale—oh, ever so pale. And the queer thing is, she doesn't use any rouge at all. She does her hair," Laurel went on, "with only five hairpins, and no net. And once I saw her put soap right on her face! And she goes out in the broiling sun and lets it beat down on her without any veil or sunshade, or anything."

"What's her age?"

"She doesn't seem to be any special age. She's like one of those goddesses in my Greek Mythology Book that way."

"Oh, come. You can tell me whether she's twenty or forty, I guess."