"How long shall I have to go on like this, Aldith?" she asked
once faintly, after a French lesson that she had scarcely been
able to sit through.
And the older girl answered carelessly, "Oh, you mustn't leave
it off, of course, but you don't feel it at all after a bit."
With which assurance Meg pursued her painful course.
Esther, the only person in a position to exercise any authority
in the matter, had not noticed at all, and, indeed, had she done,
so would not have thought very gravely of it, for it was only
four years since she, too, had been sixteen, and a "waist" had
been the most desirable thing on earth.
Once she had said unwittingly,
"What a nice little figure you are getting, Meg; this new
dressmaker certainly fits better than Miss Quinn"; and foolish
Meg, with a throb of delight, had redoubled her efforts.
Lynx-eyed Judy would have found her out long ago, and laughed her
to utter shame, but unfortunately for Meg's constitution she
was still at school, it being now the third month of her
absence.
Aldith only lived about twenty minutes' walk from Misrule, so
the two girls were always together. Twice a week they went down
to town in the river-boat to learn how to inquire, in polite
French, "Has the baker's young daughter the yellow hat, brown
gloves, and umbrella of the undertaker's niece?" And twice a
week, after they had answered irrelevantly, "No, but the surgeon
had some beer, some mustard, and the dinner-gong," Aldith conducted
her friend slowly up and down that happy hunting-ground of
Sydney youth and fashion--the Block.
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