there they sound the ph like a f, and give all the syllables—Afroddity." He felt a kind of intuition that this was nearer the correct rendering. "Well," observed Ada, "she's got a silly look, don't you think?" Leander was less narrow, and gave it as his opinion that she had been "done from a fine woman." Ada remarked that she herself would never consent to be taken in so unbecoming a costume. "One might as well have no figure at all in things hanging down for all the world like a sack," she said. Proceeding to details, she was struck by the smallness of the hands; and it must be admitted that, although the statue as a whole was slightly above the average female height, the arms from the elbow downwards, and particularly the hands, were by no means in proportion, and almost justified Miss Parkinson's objection, that "no woman could have hands so small as that." "I know some one who has—quite as small," said he softly. Ada instantly drew off one of the crimson gloves and held out her hand beside the statue's. It was a well-shaped hand, as she very well knew, but it was decidedly larger than the one with which she compared it. "I said so," she observed; "now are you satisfied, Mr. Tweddle?" But he had been thinking of a hand more slender[Pg 31] and dainty than hers, and allowed himself to admit as much. "I—I wasn't meaning you at all," he said bluntly. [Pg 31] She laughed a little jarring laugh. "Oh, Matilda, of course! Nobody is like Matilda now! But come, Mr. Tweddle, you're not going to stand there and tell me that this wonderful Matilda of yours has hands no bigger than those?" "She has been endowed with quite remarkable small hands," said he; "you wouldn't believe it without seeing. It so happens," he added suddenly, "that I can give you a very fair ideer of the size they are, for I've got a ring of hers in my pocket at this moment. It came about this way: my aunt (the same that used to let her second floor to James, and that Matilda lodges with at present), my aunt, as soon as she heard of our being engaged, nothing would do but I must give Matilda an old ring with a posy inside it, that was in our family, and we soon found the ring was too large to keep on, and I left it with old Vidler, near my place of business, to be made tighter, and called for it on my way here this
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