In Old Kentucky Part 8

"Er--what?"

"Don't you know any women, down there, but your aunt?"

"Why, yes," said he, and laughed. "I know a lot of women, down there; lots and lots of women, certainly."

"All them that go to b.a.l.l.s, and such?"

"Many of them."

"Do you like to dance with them?"

"Oh, yes; of course."

"Tell me--all about the things they wear." This was not quite the question she had started out to ask, but an answer to it might be very interesting.

She settled comfortably back upon the boulder she had chosen as a seat, her hands clasped about one knee, her face turned toward him eagerly, her eyes sparkling with keen zest.

But he looked at her, appalled. "Why," said he, "why--I don't believe I can. I know they always seem to be most charming in appearance, but just how they work the magic _I_ don't know."

"Can't you tell me nothing?" Her voice showed bitter disappointment. She unclasped the hands about her knee and sat dejected on the boulder. She gave him not the slightest hint of it, but, suddenly, a plan had come into her mind.

He looked at her regretfully. "Perhaps you'd better question me," said he. Maybe I can scare up details if you'll let me know just what you wish to hear about."

"How are their dresses made?" she asked.

"Oh, skirt, and waist, and so on," he airily replied.

She made a gesture of impatience. "Well, then, how is the skirt made?

Tell me that. Tell me everything that you remember about skirts. Are they loose as mine, or tighter?" She rose and stood before him, in her scant drapery of homespun, turning slowly, so that he might see.

It was very clever. Instantly it brought to mind the last girls he had seen down in the lowlands at a lawn-party, with their wide and much beruffled skirts.

"Oh, they're looser," he said gravely. "Much, much looser. Why, they are as big around as that!" He made a sweeping, circular gesture with his arms.

"What for tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs do they have?"

"Oh, all sorts of things--ruffles, frills, embroidery and laces."

"What's embroidery?"

He tried to tell her, but he did not make it very clear, and, realizing that he had done quite his best although he had not done so very well, she sighed and dropped that detail of the subject. But she knew what frills and ruffles were.

"And how about their waists?" said she. "Like mine, are they?"

He looked, appraisingly, at the loose basque, which, because of the budding beauty of her form rather than because of any merit of its own, had seemed to him most charming and attractive. Close examination did not show this to be the case. It was a crude garment, certainly, of crude material, crude cut, crude make. The beauty all was in the wearer's soft young curves and lissome grace.

"No," he answered, honestly, "they're not like that. In the summer, and for evenings--such as dances and the like--they are cut low at the neck.

And they are tighter."

"I suppose," said she, "they wear them things that they call corsets, under 'em. I've heard of 'em--I saw one, once--but I ain't never had one. Maybe I had better get one."

He spoke hastily. At that moment, as he gazed at her slim grace, undulant, untrammelled and as willowy as a spring sapling's, it seemed to him that it would be a sacrilege to confine it in the stiff rigidity of such artificialities as corsets. It seemed a bit indelicate, to him, to talk to her about such matters, but her guilelessness was so real and he was so a.s.sured of his own innocence, that he did what he could to make things clear to her. He descanted with some eloquence upon the wickedness of lacing, the ungracefulness of artificial forms and the beauty of her own wholly natural grace.

"I'm glad you think I'm pretty," she said frankly, plainly greatly pleased, "but I reckon I'd be prettier if I had one of them there corsets."

His protests to the contrary were not convincing, in the least.

So the lessons from the book did not go so very far that day.

"Furbelows have always interested females, I suppose," said he, "but I didn't really think you'd lose your interest in spelling-books because of them."

"I ain't lost interest in spelling-books," she said. "I ain't lost interest, at all. After I've studied good and hard I can read all about such things in the picture-papers that Mom Liza has down to the store.

They've got all kinds of pictures in 'em--all of fancy gowns and hats and things like that. She showed one to me, once, but all I could make out was just the pictures, and she couldn't manage to make out much more. She can read the names on all the letters comin' to the post-office, for there's only three folks ever gets 'em, but she ain't what you'd really call a scholar."

He laughed heartily. "So, even in the mountains, here, they take the fas.h.i.+on papers, do they?"

"No; she don't pay for 'em," she gravely answered. "They're always marked with red ink, 'Sample Copy,' so she says; but they send 'em ev'ry once a while. If you're in th' post-office, you get a lot o' things, like that--all sorts o' picture-papers, an' cards, all printed up in pretty colors, to tell what medicines to take when you get sick."

"Ah, patent-medicine advertis.e.m.e.nts."

"Yes; that's what she calls 'em, an' she's read me some powerful amazin'

stories out of 'em--them as was in short words--of folks that rose up almost from th' dead! They're wonderful!"

"They are, indeed!"

"But what I always liked th' best was them there papers tellin' about clo'es."

"Eternal feminine!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, but they are mighty peart, some o'

them dresses pictured out in them there papers."

"I've not the least doubt of it."

"And I suppose they are th' kind th' girls you know, down in th'

bluegra.s.s, wear for ev'ry day!" she sighed.

He looked at her in quick compa.s.sion and in protest.

"Madge," he said, "please listen to me. It's not dress that makes the woman, any more than it is coats that make the man. You would like me just as well if I were dressed in homespun, wouldn't you?"

"That's different."

"It isn't; it's not, a bit."

"Laws, yes! It's--oh--heaps different!" She nodded her lovely head in firm conviction. "It's heaps different and I'm goin' to know more about such things as clo'es. I ain't plumb _poverty_ poor, like lots o' folks, here in th' mountings. I got land down in th' valley I get rent from--fifty dollars, every year! I'm goin' to find out about such things."

He looked at her, almost worried. It would be a pity, he thought instantly, for this charming child of nature to become sophisticated and be fas.h.i.+onably gowned; but, of course, he made no protest.