ss, at the head of the short flight of
steps.

"Oh, Gabriella always had taste; I'll ask her about mine," Florrie
tossed back gaily in the high fluting notes which expressed so perfectly
the brilliant, if slightly metallic, quality of her personality.

Beside her mother, a plump, bouncing person, with a noisy though
imperfectly articulate habit of speech, and the prominent hips and bust
which composed the "fine figure" of the period, Florrie seemed to float
with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. From the shining
nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of
girlhood--of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the
imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously as a
flower sheds its perfume. Though her eyes were softly veiled by her
lashes, every male clerk in Brandywine & Plummer's was dazzled by the
deep blue light of her glances. In her red mouth, with its parted lips,
in the pure rose and white of her flesh, in the rich curve of her bosom,
which promised already the "fine figure" of her mother, youth and summer
were calling as they called in the velvet softness of the June breeze.
Innocent though she was, the powers of Life had selected her as a
vehicle for their inscrutable ends.

"Where is Miss Carr? I must speak to Miss Carr, please," she said to one
of the shop girls who came up, eager to serve her. "Will you tell her
that Miss Spencer is waiting to speak to her?"

Responding to the girl's artless stare of admiration, she threw a
friendly glance at her before she turned away to try on a monstrous
white Leghorn hat decorated around the crown with a trellis of pink
roses. Unless she happened to be in a particularly bad humour--and this
was not often the case--Florrie was imperturbably amiable. She enjoyed
flattery as a cat enjoys the firelight on its back, and while she purred
happily in the pleasant warmth, she had something of the sleek and
glossy look of a pretty kitten.

"How does this look on me,

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

Anonymous may refer to: Anonymus, the Latin spelling, may refer to: