Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/215

 "I've told her you're a rising young lawyer."

"I have plenty of room to rise, Auntie. If you will just keep on letting me board with you, I hope to work my practice up to ten dollars a month in the course of time."

"Don't you want to hear something about Miss Sallie?"

"Of course, I was just going to ask you if she's as homely as that last one you tried to get off on me."

"I've told you she's a beauty. She made a sensation at her finishing school in Baltimore. It's funny that she was there the last year you were at the Johns Hopkins University. She's the belle of Independence, rich, petted, and the only child of old General Worth, who thinks the sun rises and sets in her pretty blue eyes."

"So she has blue eyes?"

"Yes, blue eyes and black hair."

"What a funny combination! I never saw a girl with blue eyes and black hair."

"It's often seen in the far South. I expect you to be drowned in those blue eyes. They are big, round and child-like, and look out of their black lashes as though surprised at their dark setting. This contrast accents their dreamy beauty, and her eyes seem to swim in a dim blue mist like the point where the sea and sky meet on the horizon far out on the ocean. She is bright, witty, romantic and full of coquetry. She is determined to live her girl's life to its full limit. She is fond of society and dances divinely."

"That's bad. I never even cut the pigeon's wing in my life—and I'm too old to learn."

"She has a full queenly figure, small hands and feet, delicate wrists, a dimple in one cheek only, and a mass of brown-black hair that curls when it's going to rain."