After Richie, and nearing fourteen, was a sweet, fat, giggling
lump of a girl called Sally, with a beautiful skin and beautiful untidy
hair, and a petticoat always dragging, a collar buttoned awry, and a
belt that never by any chance united her pretty shirt waist to her crisp
linen skirt. Only a year younger than Sally was Theodora, whose staid,
precocious beauty Barbara already found disquieting--"Ted" was already
giving signs of rivalling her oldest sister--then came Jane, bold,
handsome, boyish at eleven, and lastly eight-year-old Constance, a
delicate, pretty, tearful little girl who was spoiled by every member of
the family.
The children's mother was a plump, handsome little woman with bright,
flashing eyes, dimples, and lovely little hands covered with rings.
There was no gray in her prettily puffed hair, and, if she was stouter
than any of her daughters, none could show a more trimly controlled
figure. Mrs. Toland had been impressed in the days of her happy girlhood
with the romantic philosophies of the seventies. To her, as an impulsive
young woman brimful of the zest of living, all babies had been "just too
dear and sweet," all marriages were "simply _lovely_" regardless of
circumstances, and all men were "just the dearest great big manly
fellows that ever _were_!" As Miss Sally Ford, Mrs.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133