"Sit by me on the way home, Sheila." Babe had a tremendous voice. "And
leave the old folks to gossip on the back seat. Gee! you're different
from what I thought you'd be. Ain't you small, though? You've got no
form. Say, Millings will do lots for you. Isn't Pap a character, though?
Weren't you tickled the way he took you up? Your Poppa was a painter,
wasn't he? Can you make a picture of me? I've got a steady that would be
just wild if you could."

Sheila sat with hands clenched in her shabby muff and smiled her
moonlight smile. She was giddy with the intoxicating, heady air, with the
brilliant sunset light, with Babe's loud cordiality. She wanted
desperately to like Babe; she wanted even more desperately to be liked.
She was in an unimaginable panic, now.

Babe was a splendid young animal, handsome and round and rosy, her body
crowded into a bright-blue braided, fur-trimmed coat, her face crowded
into a tight, much-ornamented veil, her head with heavy chestnut hair,
crowded into a cherry-colored, velvet turban round which seemed to be
wrapped the tail of some large wild beast. Her hands were ready to burst
from yellow buckskin gloves; her feet, with high, thick insteps, from
their tight, thin, buttoned boots, even her legs shone pink and plump
below her short skirt, through silk stockings that were threatened at the
seams. And the blue of her eyes, the red of her cheeks, the white of her
teeth, had the look of being uncontainable, too brilliant and full to
stay where they belonged. The whole creature flashed and glowed and
distended herself. Her voice was a riot of uncontrolled vitality, and, as
though to use up a little of all this superfluous energy, she was
violently chewing gum. Except for an occasional slight smacking sound, it
did not materially interfere with speech.