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Phillips, David Graham

"Susan Lenox"

On the other hand, make-up seemed to bring out the
horrors of Miss Anstruther's big, fat, yet hollow face, and to
create other and worse horrors--as if in covering her face it
somehow uncovered her soul. When the two women stripped and got
into their tights, Susan with polite modesty turned away.
However, catching sight of Miss Anstruther in the mirror that
had been hung up under one of the side lamps, she was so
fascinated that she gazed furtively at her by that indirect way.
Violet happened to see, laughed. "Look at the baby's shocked
face, Mabel," she cried.
But she was mistaken. It was sheer horror that held Susan's gaze
upon Violet's incredible hips and thighs, violently obtruded by
the close-reefed corset. Mabel had a slender figure, the waist
too short and the legs too nearly of the same girth from hip to
ankle, but for all that, attractive. Susan had never before seen
a woman in tights without any sort of skirt.
"You would show up well in those things," Violet said to her,
"that is, for a thin woman. The men don't care much for thinness."
"Not the clodhoppers and roustabouts that come to see us,"
retorted Mabel. "The more a woman looks like a cow or a sow, the
better they like it. They don't believe it's female unless it
looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen."
Miss Anstruther was not in the least offended.


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