Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/98

88 she observed, wasn't too spic-and-span. He didn't look as if he had just stepped out of the barber's shop round the corner, and he didn't smell so. His cheeks didn't shine. His collars didn't shine, and his clothes seemed to have been worn by him long enough to fall naturally into his lines, instead of retaining those of the wax dummy's with the black mustache in the gentlemen's furnishing-shop on the corner of Main and Webster Streets downtown. When he leaned forward his waistcoat (but Stella called it vest) clung to him, instead of sticking out and making caves and caverns, in which glimpses of lining and suspenders could be seen; and straight across the vest, rather low-down, where it wrinkles a little (just where it ought to wrinkle when a man leans forward), Stella observed the slender watch-chain made of gold and platinum shafts, linked together.

She observed, too, Mr. Dallas's handkerchief. He had pulled it out of his pocket and offered it to her to sit on, when she insisted upon occupying the low step of the summer-house. She had taken it from him just to feel of it. It was made of finest linen. It had a narrow hemstitched edge, and hand-embroidered letters in the corner.

"What's S stand for, Mr. Dallas?" Stella had asked with the time-worn coyness of her sex when first touching upon so intimate a subject as first names.

"Stephen." Stephen had replied shortly, from the Gloucester hammock.

"Stephen, Stephen," Stella had repeated two or three times—in a dainty, sort of experimental