Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/24

14 never slack or hasty. She was never guilty of substituting a pin for a stitch where it showed, but her negligées and night-clothes were always in a state of neglect and shabbiness. Even Laurel had begun to observe that. The first time Laurel had exclaimed, shocked, "Why, mother, there's the same hole in the toe of your stocking that was there yesterday!" Mrs. Dallas had smiled. How like her father it was! Stephen had had the same foolish blind dislike for a hole, or a rip, or a missing button, which nobody was ever going to see.

Wrapped round in her unlovely draperies, Mrs. Dallas now skuffed across the little room to the cheap oak bureau.

"Darn this thing!" she murmured, as she fumbled with the backboneless mirror, which always needed a wad of paper or a hairbrush stuck in its side, to hold it in position. "My! what a sight I am!" she exclaimed, when finally the contrary thing consented to give her back her reflection. "I certainly am some beauty at seven o'clock in the morning," she laughed, and she put both her hands to her head, pushing down the stiff towlike material, sticking out in a wild ungainly fashion about her face. Then, raising her chin, and frowning a little, she stroked her throat once or twice, where there hung, flabby and inert this morning, an unmistakable double chin.

It was a fitful sort of double chin. Showed much more at times than at others. Seemed to have periods of being sulky and stubborn. Mrs. Dallas was always in a state of indecision as to whether the thing showed less with a low, loose collar, or a high,