'Don't forget you are going to Aunt Alicia's. Do you hear me Gilberte? Come here and let me do your curls, Gilberte, do you hear me?'

'Couldn't I go there without having my hair curled, Grandmamma?'

'I don't think so!' said Madame Alvarez, quietly. She took an old pair of curling-irons, with prongs that ended in little round metal knobs, and put them to heat over the blue flame of a spirit-lamp while she prepared the tissue-papers.

'Grandmamma, couldn't you crimp my hair in waves down the side of my head for a change?'

'Out of the question. Ringlets at the very ends - that's as far as a girl of your age can possibly go. Now sit down on the footstool. '

To do so, Gilberte folded up under her the heron-like legs of a girl of fifteen. Below her tartan skirt, she revealed ribbed cotton stockings to just above the knees, unconscious of the perfect oval shape of her knee-caps. Slender calf and high-arched instep - Madame Alvarez never let her eyes run over these fine points without regretting that her granddaughter had not studied dancing professionally. At the moment she was thinking only of the girl's hair. She had corkscrewed the ends and fixed them in tissue-paper, and was now compressing the ash-0blonde ringlets between the heated knobs. With patient, soft-fingered skill, she gathered up the full magnificent weight of finely kept hair shoulders. The girl sat quite still. The smell of the heated tongs, and the whiff of vanilla in the curling-papers, made her feel drowsy. Besides, Gilberte knew that resistance would be useless. She hardly ever tried to elude the authority exercised by her family.

'Is Mamma singing Frasquita today?'

'Yes. And this evening in Si j'etais Roi. I have told you before, when you're sitting on a low seat you must keep your knees close to each other, and lean both of them together, either to the right or to the left, for the sake of decorum.'

'But Grandmamma, I've got on my drawers and my petticoat.'

'Drawers are one thing, decorum is another,' said Madame Alvarez. 'Everything depends on the attitude'

'Yes I know, Aunt Alicia has told me often enough,' Gilberte murmured from under her tent of hair.

'I do not require the help of my sister,' said Madame Alvarez testily, 'to instruct you in the elements of propriety. On that subjecty, thank goodness, I know rather more than she does,'

'Supporting you let me stay here with you today, Grandmamma, couldn't I go and see Aunt Alicia next Sunday?'

'What next!' said Madame Alvarez hauntingly. 'Have you any other purposal to make me?'

'Yes, I have,' said Gilberte. 'Have my skirts made a little longer, so I don't have to fold myself up in a Z every time I sit down... You see Grandmamma, with my skirts too shirt, I have to keep thinking of my you-know-what,'

'Silence! Aren't you ashamed to call it your you-know-what?'

'I don't mind calling it by any other name, only...'

Madame Alvarez blew out the spirit-lamp, looked at the reflection of her heavy Spanish face in the looking-glass above the mantelpiece, and then laid down on the lawn.

'There is no other name.'

A sceptical look passed across the girl's eyes. Beneath the cockle-shells of fair hair they showed a lovely dark blue, the colour of glistening slate. Gilberte unfolded with a bound.

taylor.prosser

Public Shelves

Submissions