Lady Betty Across the Water

								

of; at least, she is like that from under her chin down to the tips of
her toes. I say under her chin, for that feature, as well as all the
others above it, are miles removed from a pretty, wax lady in a
show-window.
I never supposed till I met Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that a live woman
could have a figure exactly like the fashion-plates, swelling like a
tidal wave above an hourglass of a waist, and retreating far, far into
the dim perspective below it, then suddenly bulging out behind like a
round, magnificent knoll, after a deep curve inward under the
shoulders. But Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox's figure does all these things even
when she stands still, and a great many more when she walks, which act
she accomplishes in a grand, sweepy kind of a way, with her head a
little thrown back, as if she wants everybody to know that she is
tremendously important in the scheme, not only of the world, but of the
universe.
Yet in spite of all, in the end it's her face which impresses you even
more than her figure--which is a real triumph, as the figure is so
elaborate and successful. On top of her head is a quite little coil of
hair that lifts itself, and spirals up, like a giant snail-shell. A
dagger keeps it in place, and looks as if the point plunged into Mrs.
Ess Kay's brain, though I suppose it doesn't. Over the forehead is a
noble roll which has the effect of a breaker just about to fall into
surf, but never falling. It's a black breaker, and the straight, thick
eyebrows an inch below it are black too; so are the short eyelashes,
also thick and straight, like a stiff fringe, but the eyes are
grey--grey as glass, though not transparent. Sometimes they seem almost
white, with just a tiny bead of black for the pupil. I never saw
anything so hard (except the glass marbles I used to play with): and
they look at most people as if something behind them were doing a
mental sum in arithmetic, for the Something's own advantage. They don't
look at Mother in that way; no eyes in the world would dare; but I'm
talking about ordinary people, who are not tall white arum lilies, with
the air of having grown in kings' gardens.
Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox's nose is well-shaped and rather large; so is her
mouth, with a "thin red line" of lips; but somehow it's the chin--the
feature you simply take for granted and hardly remember on most
faces--which dominates the rest. It comes rounding out under her lips,
making them seem to recede, though they don't really; and it's square,
with an effect of the skin being laid on over some perfectly hard
material, like marble, or the same ivory her teeth are made of. Besides
all this,--as if it weren't enough--she's a widow; one of those women
who look as if they had been born widows; anyway, I'm certain that Mrs.
Stuyvesant-Knox can never have been a child.
Sally Woodburn's chin is rather full, too. I wonder if, in spite of her
lazy ways, and slow, soft speech, she is very decided, like her cousin,