They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate
and fine. "The best things she's got!" a cold-
blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to
include Alice's mind and character in the implied
list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands.
However that may have been, the rest of her was
well enough. She was often called "a right pretty
girl"--temperate praise meaning a girl rather
pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say
the least. Even in repose she deserved it, though
repose was anything but her habit, being seldom
seen upon her except at home. On exhibition she
led a life of gestures, the unkind said to make her
lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually
accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders
ever giving them their impulses first, and even her
feet being cared upon, at the same time, for elo-
quence.

So much liveliness took proper place as only
accessory to that of the face, where her vivacity
reached its climax; and it was unfortunate that an
ungifted young man, new in the town, should have
attempted to define the effect upon him of all this
generosity of emphasis. He said that "the way
she used her cute hazel eves and the wonderful

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