Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/209

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MOSQUITOES
203

than small, and shoes were a problem. Though Jenny insisted that Mrs. Wiseman’s shoes were quite comfortable.

But she was clothed at last and Mrs. Wiseman gathered up the two wet garments gingerly and went to lean her hip against the bunk. The dress Jenny now wore belonged to the girl Patricia and Jenny stood before the mirror, bulging it divinely, examining herself in the mirror, smoothing the dress over her hips with a slow preening motion.

I had no idea there was that much difference between them, the other thought. It’s far more exciting than a bathing suit. . . . “Jenny,” she said, “I think—really, I— Darling, you simply must not go where men can see you, like that. For Mrs. Maurier’s sake, you know; she’s having enough trouble as it is, without any rioting.”

“Don’t it look all right? It feels all right,” Jenny answered, trying to see as much of herself as possible in a twelve-inch glass.

“I don’t doubt it. You must be able to feel every stitch in it. But we’ll have to get something else for you to wear. Slip it off, darling.”

Jenny obeyed. “It feels all right to me,” she repeated. “It don’t feel funny.”

“It doesn’t look funny, not at all. On the contrary, in fact. That’s the trouble with it,” the other answered delving busily in her bag.

“I always thought I had the kind of figure that could wear anything,” Jenny persisted, holding the dress regretfully in her hands.

“You have,” the other told her, “exactly that kind. Terribly like that. Simple and inevitable. Devastating.”

“Devastating,” Jenny repeated with interest. “There was a kind of funny little man at Mandeville that day . . .” She turned to the mirror again, trying to see as much of herself