As they plodded wearily toward her, she bit her red lips,
smacked them on her cruel little white teeth like a festive and
sprightly ghoul, and lisped:--
"You DO look so like guys! For all the world like those English
shopkeepers we met on the Righi, doing the three-guinea excursion
in their Sunday clothes!"
Certainly the spectacle of these exotically plumed bipeds, whose
fine feathers were already bedrabbled by sand and growing limp in
the sea breeze, was somewhat dissonant with the rudeness of sea and
sky and shore. A few gulls screamed at them; a loon, startled from
the lagoon, arose shrieking and protesting, with painfully extended
legs, in obvious burlesque of the younger gentleman. The elder
lady felt the justice of her gentle daughter's criticism, and
retaliated with simple directness:--
"Your skirt is ruined, your hair is coming down, your hat is half
off your head, and your shoes--in Heaven's name, Maria! what HAVE
you done with your shoes?"
Maria had exhibited a slim stockinged foot from under her skirt.
It was scarcely three fingers broad, with an arch as patrician as
her nose.
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