Stories of a Western Town [46]
it looked gentle, and the least in the world sad. She had one of those clear olive skins that easily grow pale; it was pale to-day. Her black hair was fine as spun silk; the coil under her hat-brim shone as she moved. The fine hair, the soft, transparent skin, and the beautiful marking of her brows were responsible for an air of fragile daintiness in her person, just as her almond-shaped, liquid dark eyes and unsmiling mouth made her look sad. It was a most attractive face, in all its moods; sometimes it was a beautiful face; yet it did not have a single perfect feature except the mouth, which--at least so Harry Lossing told his mother--might have been stolen from the Venus of Milo. Even the mouth, some critics called too small for her nose; but it is as easy to call her nose too large for her mouth. The instant she turned her back on the bustle of the station, all the lines in her face seemed to waver and the eyes to brighten. Finally, when the train rolled up to the platform and a young-looking elderly man swung himself nimbly off the steps, the color flared up in her cheeks, only to sink as suddenly; like a candle flame in a gust of wind. Mr. Armorer put his two arms and his umbrella and travelling-bag about the charming shape in blue, at the same time exclaiming, "You're a good girl to come out so early, Essie! How's Aunt Meg?" "Oh, very well. She would have come too, but she hasn't come back from training." "Training?" "Yes, dear, she has a regular trainer, like John L. Sullivan, you know. She drives out to the park with Eliza and me, and walks and runs races, and does gymnastics. She has lost ten pounds." Armorer wagged his head with a grin: "I dare say. I thought so when you began. Meg is always moaning and groaning because she isn't a sylph! She will make her cook's life a burden for about two months and lose ten pounds, and then she will revel in ice-cream! Last time, she was raving about Dr. Salisbury and living on beefsteak sausages, spending a fortune starving herself." "She had Dr. Salisbury's pamphlet; but Cardigan told her it was a long way out; so she said she hated to have it do no one any good, and she gave it to Maria, one of the maids, who is always fretting because she is so thin." "But the thing was to cure fat people!" "Precisely." Esther laughed a little low laugh, at which her father's eyes shone; "but you see she told Maria to exactly reverse the advice and eat everything that was injurious to stout people, and it would be just right for her." "I perceive," said Armorer, dryly; "very ingenious and feminine scheme. But who is Cardigan?" "Shuey Cardigan? He is the trainer. He is a fireman in a furniture shop, now; but he used to be the boxing teacher for some Harvard men; and he was a distinguished pugilist, once. He said to me, modestly, 'I don't suppose you will have seen my name in the _Police Gazette_, miss?' But he really is a very sober, decent man, notwithstanding." "Your Aunt Meg always was picking up queer birds! Pray, who introduced this decent pugilist?" Esther was getting into the carriage; her face was turned from him, but he could see the pink deepen in her ear and the oval of her cheek. She answered that it was a friend of theirs, Mr. Lossing. As if the name had struck them both dumb, neither spoke for a few moments. Armorer bit a sigh in two. "Essie," said he, "I guess it is no use to side-track the subject. You know why I came here, don't you?" "Aunt Meg told me what she wrote to you." "I knew she would. She had compunctions of conscience letting him hang round you, until she told me; and then she had awful gripes because she had told, and had to confess to YOU!" He continued in a different tone: "Essie, I have missed your mother a long while, and nobody knows how that kind of missing hurts; but it seems to me I never missed her as I do to-day. I need her to advise me about you, Essie. It is like this: I don't want to be a stern parent any more than you want to elope on a rope ladder. We have got to look at this thing together, my dear little girl, and try to--to