Her
long throat like the rest of her body was white.
All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes,
consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by surprise
when the little Alexina came along several years after her mother was
supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors hurriedly and
quite forgotten her usual nice proportions.
The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, for
the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short straight thin
nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a regularity, and the
thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and shook quite alarmingly
when she was angry.
These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality were
concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the brilliant happy
candid eyes (which she could convert into a madonna's by the simple trick
of lifting them a trifle and showing a lower crescent of devotional white),
the love of life and eagerness to enjoy that radiated from her thin
admirably proportioned body, which, at this time, held in the limp
slouching fashion of the hour, made her look rather small. In reality she
was nearly as tall as her mother or the dignified Mrs. Abbott, who rejoiced
in every inch of her five feet eight, and retained the free erect carriage
of her girlhood.
Alexina, with a sharp glance about her disordered room, hastily disarranged
her bed, and, sending her ball slippers after the gown, ran across the hall
and threw herself into her mother's arms.
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