TOM SAWYER ABROAD TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
AND 16 OTHER STORIES - online book

Home Main Menu Order Support About Search



Share page  


Previous Contents Next

Loves of A. Fitz Clarence and Rosa Ethelton 415
Sanky, Hawthorne, " Rab and his Friends," cook­books, prayer-books, pattern-books — and books about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantel-piece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.
But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within or without, could offer for con­templation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scar­let neighbor of the garden ; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement were instinct with native grace.
Her dress and adornment were marked by that ex­quisite harmony that can come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light blue flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille; overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins; corn-colored polonaise, en panier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff-velvet lashings; basque of lavender reps, picked out with Valenciennes; low neck, short sleeves; maroon-velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside handker­chief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure
I