No. She has everything that money can buy, but lacks a thing that money cannot buy.
Muriel is the poor long girl known to me.
Muriel’s wail is, _There is so much of me to dress_.
When last I saw Muriel, her boots were down at heel, and to shamefacedness she added—shamefootedness.
Dearest to me of long girls is one Dorothy, big and beautiful and kind, knowing some things—not many—and wanting to know more.
“Is there not such a word as ‘magnanimosity’ for ‘kindness’?”
It was hard to have to tell her that there was not, and that, if ever such a word as “magnanimosity” shall be, it will certainly not be a word for “kindness.”
Have you noticed that a big girl mostly has a small girl for her friend, and _vice versâ_? Shakespeare, who noticed all things, noticed that. With Helena he puts Hermia, and with Rosalind Celia.
The tall girls of prose-fiction are numerous. For _A_ there is Blackmore’s Annie, who “never tried to look away when honest people gazed at her.” For _B_ there is Thackeray’s Beatrix, and there is one for every other letter in the alphabet.
The “towering big” girl—to put the matter Hibernically—had a great vogue a few years ago as the heroine of _Trilby_, but, on the whole, the small girl has been more singled out for loving treatment by novelists than the tall girl. Dickens had a known preference for her, and his “little Nell” has eclipsed all big Nells. In the description of one Ruth, too, it may be noticed that he uses with loving iteration the word “little”—“pleasant little Ruth! cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet little Ruth!”
In fiction subsequent to that of Dickens there is a Mary described thus—“a little dumpty body, with a yellow face and a red nose, the smile of an angel, and a heart full of many little secrets of other people’s, and of one great one of her own, which is no business of any man’s.”
All readers of Kingsley’s _Two Years Ago_ will remember that Mary.
The poets no less than the prose-writers have busied themselves with the small girl. The mere word _Duchess_ to most people calls up a picture of stateliness, yet Browning describes a duchess as follows:—
In these days of tall girls small girls are apt to fret. There is one known to me whose case is pitifuller than that of the little fir-tree in Andersen.