United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I feel beastly shabby among all these gorgeously attired personages," said Redgrave, looking down at his plain tweed suit, as they were conducted with every manifestation of politeness along the magnificent vestibule into which the door opened. "And I'm sure I am quite a dowdy in comparison with these lovely creatures," added Zaidie, "although this dress was made in Paris.
Do you know, M. de Marsac, that I have no patience with you. And she stamped her foot on the floor. 'But, mademoiselle, I stammered humbly, wondering what in the world she meant, 'what have I done? 'Done? she repeated angrily. 'Done? It is not what you have done, it is what you are. I have no patience with you. Why are you so dull, sir? Why are you so dowdy?
To the much-confused maid of all work she commences relating the loss of her luggage. With one hand swinging the door and the other tucked under her dowdy apron, she says, "Troth, Mam, and ye ought to be thankful, for the like of that's done every day." Mrs. Swiggs would like a room for the night at least, but is told, in a somewhat confused style, that not a room in the house is in order.
She removed her dowdy black dress, and, opening a drawer in her wardrobe, took out a soft gray silk which lay folded between tissue paper and sprigs of lavender. She put the dress on, and fastened soft lace ruffles round her throat and at her wrists. The dress transformed her. It toned with all her faded charms.
The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert! The short white cotton gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped off and put in her own pocket.
I saw the sister's face a brilliantly beautiful face it was brighter eyes and lips and more lovely auburn hair I have never seen even Kit would have been plain and dowdy beside her I saw it harden strangely. A moment before, the two had been in one another's arms. Now they stood apart, somehow chilled and disillusionised. The shadow of the priest had fallen upon them had come between them.
Now, Dorcas' father is a well-to-do man, and Judith hasn't any father, and she does the best she can with the clothes she has. 'It is not money I am talking about, he said, 'it is disposition. If a young woman wants to look well in her own family, she will find some way to do it. At any rate, she could let it be seen that she is not satisfied to look like a dowdy. And then he went away.
You remember Nora, Julius, when she was a little girl in frocks?" "She now wears remarkable gowns," chimed in the doctor. "Which," said Julius, "I have no doubt are becoming." "My brother," said Nora, with a sunny smile, "is jealous; because, being a doctor, he must wear only dowdy clothes of dingy colours."
The next time I saw her she was opening the door of the house on the Prado to me, with her cap and the little black silk apron on, and with that marked personality of her own, which had been concealed so perfectly in the dowdy walking dress, very much to the fore.
One of Boston's leading merchants told me that Selfridge in London was selling more jaunty ready-to-wear dresses than ever before. It was part of John Bull's discipline in ante-bellum dependent days to keep his women folk dowdy.