Now she sighed, and cast a furtive glance through the leafage toward the house, a glance which reflected an inner uneasiness because she feared her mother might discover she hadn't dusted the parlours; mother would accuse her of “dawdling.” Sighing again for grown-ups who seldom understand, Missy turned to the Messenger in her lap.
Here was a double-page of “Women Who Are Achieving”--the reason for the periodical's presence in Missy's society. There was a half-tone of a lady who had climbed a high peak in the Canadian Rockies; Missy didn't much admire her unfeminine attire, yet it was something to get one's picture printed--in any garb. Then there was a Southern woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn't go another day.)
Missy's glance hurried to the next picture. It presented the only lady Sheriff in the state of Colorado. Missy pondered. Politics--Ridgeley Holman Dobson was interested in politics; his lecture had been about something-or-other political--she wished, now, she'd paid more attention to what he'd talked about. Politics, it seemed, was a promising field in the broadening life of women. And they always had a Sheriff in Cherryvale. Just what were a Sheriff's duties? And how old must one be to become a Sheriff? This Colorado woman certainly didn't look young. She wasn't pretty, either--her nose was too long and her lips too thin and her hair too tight; perhaps lady Sheriffs had to look severe so as to enforce the law.
Missy sighed once more. It would have been pleasant to feel she was working in the same field with Ridgeley Holman Dobson.
Then, suddenly, she let her sigh die half-grown as her eye came to the portrait of another woman who had achieved. No one could claim this one wasn't attractive looking. She was young and she was beautiful, beautiful in a peculiarly perfected and aristocratic way; her hair lay in meticulously even waves, and her features looked as though they had been chiselled, and a long ear-ring dangled from each tiny ear. Missy wasn't surprised to read she was a noblewoman, her name was Lady Sylvia Southwoode--what an adorable name!