Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/68

 composition of flowers and ribbons; her eyes had travelled up and down Millicent's whole person, but they rested in fascination on this ornament. The girl had forgotten how small the dressmaker was; she barely came up to her shoulder. She had lost her hair, and wore a cap, which Millicent noticed in return, wondering if that were a specimen of what she thought the fashion. Miss Pynsent stared up at her as if she had been six feet high; but she was used to that sort of surprised admiration, being perfectly conscious that she was a magnificent young woman.

'Won't you take me into your shop?' she asked. 'I don't want to order anything; I only want to inquire after your 'ealth; and isn't this rather an awkward place to talk?' She made her way further in, without waiting for permission, seeing that her startled hostess had not yet guessed.

'The show-room is on the right hand,' said Miss Pynsent, with her professional manner, which was intended, evidently, to mark a difference. She spoke as if on the other side, where the horizon was bounded by the partition of the next house, there were labyrinths of apartments. Passing in after her guest she found the young lady already spread out upon the sofa, the everlasting sofa, in the righthand corner as you faced the window, covered with a light, shrunken shroud of a strange yellow stuff, the tinge of which revealed years of washing, and surmounted by a coloured print of Rebekah at the Well, balancing, in the opposite quarter, with a portrait of the Empress of the French, taken from an illustrated newspaper and framed and glazed in the manner of 1853. Millicent looked about her, asking herself what Miss Pynsent had to show and