"_It's the shape of the cheeks_!" said Bridget darkly. "Yourself now,
and the ladies of your age, it's pretty, slim bits of faces you have,
going to a peak at the chin. When you're old, it runs to squares and
doubles. Look to your cheeks, miss, if you wants to keep young!" She
unfolded her arms, stretched them at full length, and comfortably folded
them again. Her broad chest heaved in a cackle of amused reminiscence.
"Sure, d'ye reminder Miss Kathleen when she play-acted the ould lady,
the last Christmas party?"
Poor old Bridget! She got the surprise of her life in my reception of
that simple question. Jumping out of my chair, dancing round, whooping
and hurraying "like a daft thing," as she afterwards described my
movements. Then to find herself at one moment enthusiastically patted
on the back, and at the next to be pushed towards the door, and exhorted
to hurry!--hurry!--to mount to the attic, and bring down the old tin
box--well, it was disconcerting, to say the least of it, and Bridget's
dignity was visibly upset. She had forgotten that all the "make ups"
which we had used for various Christmas festivals were stored away in
that old tin box, and consequently could not guess that I was fired with
an ambition to try on Kathie's disguise forthwith.
Ten minutes later I was standing before the glass and enthusiastically
acclaiming the truth of Bridget's statement, as I stared at the
reflection of a spectacled dame with grizzled eyebrows, grey hair banded
smoothly over the ears, and a bulging fullness at the base of each
cheek! It _was_ the cheeks that made the disguise! Spectacles and hair
still left the personality of the face untouched; even the bushy
eyebrows were but a partial disguise, but with the insertion of those
small india-rubber pads came an utter and radical change. That chubby,
square-faced woman was not Evelyn Wastneys. Never by any possibility
could she see forty again. So far as propriety went, she might roam
alone from one end of the world to the other. If she lived in the
largest block of flats that was ever erected, her neighbours would
regard her comings and goings with serene indifference. Admirable
woman! She did _not_ "take the eye". I met her spectacled glance with
a beam of approval.
"I have it!--I have it! I must _dress_ for the part! In London I'll be
a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece--my own niece and namesake, who,
of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie's _protegees_ and
give them a good time!" The wildness, the audacity of the project made
to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so
hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there
was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It
was so difficult to show oneself in one's _real_ colours, to see and
know other people as they really were. But now!--oh, what a unique and
exhilarating experience it would be to taste at the same time the
romance of youth and the freedom of age, to witness the different sides
of other characters as exhibited in their treatment of aunt and niece.
That one illuminating suggestion of Bridget's has cleared the way. From
the moment of hearing there had been no real hesitation; before night
fell my plans were made, and a telegram to Charmion was speeding on its
way. A new life lay before me--a dual life, teeming with interest and
possibility. On one hand, my fate must be to some extent bound up with
that of Charmion Fane, the most interesting and, in a sense, mysterious
woman I had ever met; on the other, I was plunging into the unknown, and
transforming myself into a new personality, to meet the new
circumstances. I stared at myself in the glass and solemnly shook my
grey head.
"Evelyn, my dear, be prepared! You are going to have an adventurous
time!"