at a seminary for young ladies. Then she turned to the maid and said:
"Now, Emblem, touch my eyes up. And improve my cheeks a little."
Mrs. Polly did as she was bid; dabbed the powder on daintily and subtly, made her a provoking dimple with uncommon art, pencilled her brows arch and swarthy, then heated a hairpin in the candle and curled her eye-lashes into a provoking crispness, a trick she had borrowed from the French. Then she selected a new robe for her, even more elegant than the one she wore, and while the maid, to give her greater ease and comfort in the wearing of it, unpicked a portion of the bodice and concealed the opened seams by cunning contrivances of lace, Miss Prue assiduously practised the poise and movements of her form. For an hour she went up the room and down the room under my direction, with skirts gracefully lifted now in two fingers of one hand, now in two fingers of the other. And so intelligent and persistent was she that soon she seemed to sail across the floor with the lofty imperious motion of a woman of quality.
Thereafter she besieged the mirror; to practise smiling, be it said. Lo! at the first trial there was a bewitching dimple at the left corner of her mouth revealed. And those lips, how red they were, and how inviting! What may not red ochre do? Such illumination of those doors of wit looked seducing, irresistible. Later, she tried a little trill of laughter. What a fluted woodnote did she make of it! Next
