fright?--as slinky as if I had been drawn through a key-hole?

_Miss Larches._ Leave off her hoop?

_Mr. Key._ Be seen without a hoop? Why, what a guy a woman would look
without a hoop! I suppose they do take them off at certain times, but
then they are not visible to the naked eye.

_Tomes._ Yes, Grey,--why take off her hoop? I don't care, you know, to
have hoops worn. But worn or not worn, what difference does it make?

_Grey_. All against me?--a fair representation of the general feeling
on the momentous subject at this moment, I suppose. But ten years
ago,--that's about a year after I first saw you, and a year before we
were married, you remember, Nelly,--no lady wore a hoop; and had I said
then that you looked like a fright, or, as Mr. Key phrases it, a guy, I
should have belied my own opinion, and, I believe, given you no little
pain.

_Mrs. Grey_. Master Presumption, I'm responsible for none of your
conceited notions; and if I were, it wasn't the fashion then to wear
hoops,--and to be out of the fashion is to be a fright and a guy.

_Miss Larches_. Yes, the fashion is always pretty.

_Grey_. Is it, Miss Larches? Then it must always have been pretty. Let
us see. Look you all here. In this small portfolio is a collection of
prints which exhibits the fashions of France, Italy, and England, in
more or less detail, for eight hundred years back.