Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/70

 'Bless my soul, you must be the little 'Enning!' Miss Pynsent exclaimed, planted before her and going now into every detail.

'Well, I'm glad you have made up your mind. I thought you'd know me directly. I had a call to make in this part, and it came into my 'ead to look you up. I don't like to lose sight of old friends.'

'I never knew you—you've improved so,' Miss Pynsent rejoined, with a candour justified by her age and her consciousness of respectability.

'Well, you haven't changed; you were always calling me something horrid.'

'I dare say it doesn't matter to you now, does it?' said the dressmaker, seating herself, but quite unable to take up her work, absorbed as she was in the examination of her visitor.

'Oh, I'm all right now,' Miss Henning replied, with the air of one who had nothing to fear from human judgments.

'You were a pretty child—I never said the contrary to that; but I had no idea you'd turn out like this. You're too tall for a woman,' Miss Pynsent added, much divided between an old prejudice and a new appreciation.

'Well, I enjoy beautiful 'ealth,' said the young lady; 'every one thinks I'm twenty.' She spoke with a certain artless pride in her bigness and her bloom, and as if, to show her development, she would have taken off her jacket or let you feel her upper arm. She was very handsome, with a shining, bold, good-natured eye, a fine, free, facial oval, an abundance of brown hair, and a smile which showed the whiteness of her teeth. Her head was set upon a fair, strong neck, and her tall young figure was rich in feminine