The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson

Author:Henry Handel Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC043000
ISBN: 9781921776755
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

XIV

‘My cousin Bob’s awfully gone on you.’ .

Laura gaped at Tilly, in crimson disbelief. ‘But I’ve never spoken to him!’

‘Doesn’t count. He’s seen you in church.’

‘Go on!—you’re stuffing!’

‘Word of honour! And I’ve promised him to ask Aunt if I can bring you with me to lunch, next Saturday.’

Laura looked forward to this day with mixed feelings. She was flattered at being invited to the big house in town where Tilly’s relatives lived; but she felt embarrassed at the prospect, and she had not the least idea what a boy who was ‘gone’ on you would expect you to be or to do. Bob was a beautiful youth of seventeen, tall, and dark, and slender, with milk-white teeth and Spanish eyes; and Laura’s mouth dried up when she thought of perhaps having to be sprightly or coquettish with him.

On the eventful morning, Tilly came to her room while she was dressing, and eyed her critically.

‘Oh, I say, don’t put on that brown hat…for mercy’s sake! Bob can’t stand brown.’

But the brown was Laura’s best, and she demurred.

‘Oh well, if you don’t care to look nice, you know…’ Of course she did; she was burning to. She even accepted the loan of a sash from her friend, because ‘Bob loves blue’; and went out feeling odd and unlike herself, in her everyday hat, and borrowed plumes.

The aunt, a pleasant, youthful-looking lady, called for them in a white-hooded wagonette, and set them down at the house with a playful warning.

‘Now, don’t be up to any mischief, you two!’

‘No fear!’ was Tilly’s genial response, as aunt and cab drove off.

They were going to ‘do the block’, Tilly explained and would meet Bob there; but they must first make sure that the drive had not disarranged their hair or the position of their hats; and she led the way to her aunt’s bedroom.

Laura, though she had her share of natural vanity, was too impatient to do more than cast a perfunctory glance at her reflected self. At this period of her life, when a drive in a hired cab was enough of a novelty to give her pleasure, a day such as the one that lay before her filled her with unbounded anticipation.

She fidgeted from one leg to another, while she waited. For Tilly was in no hurry to be gone: she prinked and finicked, making lavish use, after the little swing-glass at school, of the big mirror with its movable wings; she examined her teeth, pulled down her under-lids, combed her eyebrows, twisted her neck this way and that, in an endeavour to view her person from every angle; she took liberties with perfumes and brushes: was, in short, blind and deaf to all but the perfecting of herself—this rather mannish little self, which, despite a most womanly plumpness, affected a boyish bonhomie, and emphasised the role by wearing a stiff white collar and cuffs.

Laura was glad when she at last decided that she would ‘do’, and when they stepped out into the radiant autumn morning.

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