Domestic fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Hertfordshire (England) -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
And yet she was not, according to my idea, by any means an ill-favored
young woman. It is true that she wore spectacles; and, as she always
desired to have her eyes about with her, she never put them off when out
of bed. But how many German girls do the like, and are not accounted for
that reason to be plain? She was tall and well-made, we may almost say
robust. She had the full use of all her limbs, and was never ashamed of
using them. I think she was wrong when she would be seen to wheel the
barrow about the garden, and that her hands must have suffered in her
attempts to live down the conventional absurdities of the world. It is
true that she did wear gloves during her gardening, but she wore them
only in obedience to her father's request. She had bright eyes, somewhat
far apart, and well-made, wholesome, regular features. Her nose was
large, and her mouth was large, but they were singularly intelligent,
and full of humor when she was pleased in conversation. As to her hair,
she was too indifferent to enable one to say that it was attractive; but
it was smoothed twice a day, was very copious, and always very clean.
Indeed, for cleanliness from head to foot she was a model. "She is very
clean, but then it's second to nothing to her," had said a sarcastic old
lady, who had meant to imply that Miss Dorothy Grey was not constant at
church. But the sarcastic old lady had known nothing about it. Dorothy
Grey never stayed away from morning church unless her presence was
desired by her father, and for once or twice that she might do so she
would take her father with her three or four times,--against the grain
with him, it must be acknowledged.
But the most singular attribute of the lady's appearance has still to be
mentioned. She always wore a slouch hat, which from motives of propriety
she called her bonnet, which gave her a singular appearance, as though
it had been put on to thatch her entirely from the weather. It was made
generally of black straw, and was round, equal at all points of the
circle, and was fastened with broad brown ribbons. It was supposed in
the neighborhood to be completely weather-tight.
The unimaginative nature of Fulham did not allow the Fulham mind to
gather in the fact that, at the same time, she might possess two or
three such hats. But they were undoubtedly precisely similar, and she
would wear them in London with exactly the same indifference as in the
comparatively rural neighborhood of her own residence. She would, in
truth, go up and down in the omnibus, and would do so alone, without the
slightest regard to the opinion of any of her neighbors. The Carroll
girls would laugh at her behind her back, but no Carroll girl had been
seen ever to smile before her face, instigated to do so by their
cousin's vagaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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