I dare say you
know that you have big eyes and that they're a good colour, but
I may as well hint to you that men do not like to be stared at as
if their deeps were being searched. Drop your eyelids."
Robin's lids dropped in spite of herself because she was startled,
but immediately she was startled again by a note in her mother's
voice--a note of added irritation.
"Don't make a habit of dropping them too often," it broke out, "or
it will look as if you did it to show your eyelashes. Girls with
tricks of that sort are always laughed at. Alison Carr LIVES
sideways became she has a pretty profile."
Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been
watching her as she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized her
daughter. The fact was that she took in her every point, being an
astute censor of other women's charms.
"Stand up," she said.
Robin stood up because she could not well refuse to do so, but
she coloured because she was suddenly ashamed.
"You're not little, but you're not tall," her mother said. "That's
against you. It's the fashion for women to be immensely tall
now. Du Maurier's pictures in Punch and his idiotic Trilby did it.
Clothes are made for giantesses. I don't care about it myself, but
a girl's rather out of it if she's much less than six feet high.
You can sit down."
A more singular interview between mother and daughter had assuredly
rarely taken place.
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