Married or Single?: A Novel (Complete)

Florence Blewitt, who so successfully practised the art of plain speaking and trampling on other people's susceptibilitiespeople were welcome to trample on hers, she declared; she had nonewas a short, squarely-built girl of sixteen, with a sharp nose, thick brown hair, intelligent grey eyes, and a very dark skina skin that betrayed no soupçon of foreign blood, but was, nevertheless, more brown than white. She was brusque, eccentric, clever, and indolent. Florence couldif she wouldbut she so seldom would. She preferred the ease of an undisturbed seat at the very bottom of the class to ambitious battlings and feverish strivings for the first place. She was the spoiled only daughter of a wealthy merchant and shipowner, and, being deferred to and made much of at home, was disposed to be both arbitrary and independent at school. Moreover, she was selfish, which is not a taking trait in a young woman's character, and was anything but a popular idol. She would borrow readily, but hated to lend; and the only thing with which she was generous was her advice; the sole present she was ever known to make was her opiniongratis. Few were honoured by her liking, and if she had a friend at Harperton, it was the girl who sat beside her, conscientiously mending a basketful of most hopeless-looking stockings. "I wonder what your fate will be, Maddie?" said Flo, staring at her meditatively, and studying her delicate profile, her pencilled eyebrows, her shining hair. "I wonder too," echoed Madeline, with a profound sigh. Madeline West had been born in Melbourne, and sent home at the age of seven to Mrs. Harper's establishment, where she had remained for ten years. From a skinny, elf-like, wildly excitable child, she had grown up into an extremely pretty girl, with what the drawing-master termed "wonderful colouring." Her hair, eyebrows, and lashes were dark, her eyes two shades lighter, but it was in her complexion and the exquisite modelling of her head and features that her chief beauty lay. Her head was small, and beautifully set upon her shoulders; her skin was of creamy fairness, with a faint shade of carmine in her cheeksa colour so delicate that it went and came at a look or word. She was tall, slight, and wonderfully graceful; full of vivacity, activity, versatility and resource, ready to throw herself warmly into any scheme for amusement or mischiefthat was to say, twelve months previously. She was by far the most striking-looking and admired of Mrs. Harper's forty boarders, and, notwithstanding this drawback to feminine goodwill, was a great favourite with pupils, teachers, and servants. Her popularity had even survived that terrible test of altered circumstancesthat dire fall from the wealthy Australian heiress to the unpaid slavey of the establishment. She changed, of course, her ringing laugh and her happy air; her merry repartee and snatches of songs had disappeared with the pretty frocks and hats and shoes which she had loved so well. She was developing a staid, grown-up manner, according to her fellow-pupils; she held back from their advancesabdicated of her own accord, and her place as queen of the school was filled, after a decent interregnum, by a rich Cockney, who was as lavish of her shillings, as she was frugal in the matter of h's, and who, according to Flo Blewitt, was "a harmless, good-natured, vulgar, poor creature."

Dettagli