There must have been something very odd or very attractive in the
personal appearance of this young woman, for she undoubtedly attracted
a vast deal of attention as she passed through the streets. It would
require something special, one would imagine, to intervene between
a man and the toothache; and yet a gentleman seated in a dentist's
ante-room in George Street, with a face swollen to twice its natural
size, and all out of drawing, and vainly endeavouring to solace
himself, and to forget the coming wrench, with the pleasant pages of a
ten-years'-old _Bentleys Miscellany_, flung the book aside as he saw
the girl go by, and crammed himself into a corner of the window to look
after her retreating figure. Two sporting gentlemen standing at the
freshly-sanded door of Limmer's Hotel, smoking cigars, and muttering
to each other in whispers of forthcoming "events," suspended their
conversation and exchanged a rapid wink as she flitted by them. The
old boys sunning themselves in Bond Street, pottering into Ebers' for
their stalls, or pricing fish at Groves's, were very much fluttered by
the girl's transient appearance among them. The little head was carried
very erect, and there must have been something in the expression of the
face which daunted the veterans, and prevented them from addressing
her. One or two gave chase, but soon found out that the gouty feet
so neatly incased in varnished boots had no chance with this modern
Atalanta, who sailed away without a check, looking neither to the right
nor to the left. Nor were men her only admirers; ladies sitting in
their carriages at shop-doors would look at her half in wonderment,
half in admiration, and whisper to each other: "What a pretty girl!"
and these compliments pleased her immensely, and brought the colour to
her face, adding to her beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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