Hippolyta and Philippa Horsman were in tightly-made short-skirted
dresses, pork-pie hats, and strong boots, all black picked out with
scarlet, like Hippo's own complexion. She was tall, with a good
active figure, and handsome, but she had reached the age when the
colouring loses its pure incarnadine and becomes hard and fixed, and
she had a certain likeness to all those creatures whose names are
compounded of tiger. But she was a good-natured being, and of late
I had begun to understand better her aspirations towards doing and
becoming something more than the mere domestic furniture kind of
young lady.
Her aberrations against good taste and reticence were, I began to
understand, misdirected outbreaks of the desire to be up and doing.
Even now, as we ladies drew for our turn, she was saying, half sadly,
"I'm tired of it all. What good comes of getting this belt over and
over again? If it were rifle or pistol shooting it might be of use,
but one could hardly organise a regiment of volunteers with the long
bows when the invasion comes off."
Wit about the Amazonian regiment with the long bow was current all
the time we ladies were shooting, and Eustace was worrying me to such
a degree, that nervousness made me perform ten degrees worse than
usual, but that mattered little, for Hippolyta, with another of her
cui bono sighs, carried off the Roman mosaic that was the ladies'
prize, telling Pippa that it should be hers when the belt was won.
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