deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been
taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been
that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no
doubt that these women were not only full grown, but some of them,
alas! wives and mothers.

Poor little things.--And this they have gained by so-called
civilisation: the power of aping the "fashions" by which the
worn-out "Parisienne" hides her own personal defects; and of
making themselves, by innate want of that taste which the
"Parisienne" possesses, only the cause of something like a sneer
from many a cultivated man; and of something like a sneer, too,
from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and
swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better
dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-
girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-
dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air upon the
open moor.

But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Well--it
is sometimes pretty: but how seldom handsome, which is a higher
quality by far. It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face.
Plenty of money, and perhaps too much, is spent on those fine
clothes. It had been better, to judge from the complexion, if
some of that money had been spent in solid wholesome food. She
looks as if she lived--as she too often does, I hear--on tea and
bread-and-butter, or rather on bread with the minimum of butter.
For as the want of bone indicates a deficiency of phosphatic food,
so does the want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency
of hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa:- that is not her fault.