She never called her friend Meg, pronouncing that
name to be "too domestic and altogether unlovely."
Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful
one, and sighed profoundly. "What ought I to be?" she said in a
low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen--or nineteen,
Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never he
obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round."
Aldith had not only made statements and comparisons, she had given
her friend practical advice, and shown her how the thing was to be
done. And every night and morning Meg pulled away ruthlessly
at her corset laces, and crushed her beautiful little body into
narrower space. She had already brought it within a girdle of
twenty-one inches, which was a clear saving of two, and she had
taken in all her dresses at the seams.
But she gave up the evening game of cricket, and she never made one
at rounders now, much to the others' disgust. No one, to look at
the sweet blossom-like face, and soft, calm eyes, could have
guessed what torture was being felt beneath the now pretty,
welt-fitting dress body. To walk quickly was positive pain; to
stoop, almost agony; but she endured it all with a heroism
worthy of a truly noble cause.
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