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, mother?" she asked over her shoulder of Mrs.
Spencer, who was babbling cheerfully in her loud tones to Miss
Lancaster, the forewoman.

Though some of the best blood in Virginia, profusely diluted with some
of the worst, flowed comfortably in Mrs. Spencer's veins, it was
impossible even for her relatives to deny that she could be at times
decidedly vulgar. Having been a conspicuous belle and beauty of a bold
and dashing type in her youth, she now devoted her middle-age to the
enjoyment of those pleasures which she had formerly sacrificed to the
preservation of her figure and her complexion. Though she still dyed her
somewhat damaged hair, and strenuously pinched in her widening waist,
she had ceased, since her fiftieth birthday, to forego the lesser
comforts of the body. As she was a person of small imagination, and of
no sentiment, it is probable that she was happier now than she had been
in the days when she suffered the deprivations and enjoyed the triumphs
of beauty.

"What's that, Florrie?" she inquired shrilly. "No, I shouldn't get that
if I were you. It doesn't flare enough. I'm crazy about a flare."