United States or Norway ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Royce had always looked old, even long ago when she used to come into church with her little girls, a tiny woman in tiny high-heeled shoes and a big hat with nodding plumes, her black dress covered with bugles and jet that glittered and rattled and made her seem hard on the outside, like an insect. Yes, he must see to it that Enid went about and saw more of other people.

A score or so of men had passed muster. The line on the post at the wooden awning in front of Schnitzler's saloon was marked at five feet six. All had stood by it with their heads above the line. It was Watts McHurdie's turn. He wore high-heeled boots for the occasion, but strut as he would, his roached hair would not touch the stick that came over the line.

First came Berthé, in her black dress and white cap, holding a lamp high above her head, and screwing her forehead into a mass of wrinkles as she peered out into the surrounding darkness. After her came madame, holding up her dress and stepping daintily along in her high-heeled little slippers.

He unconsciously fell into a sort of indefinable, flat, stumping gait, barely noticeable to one who had never seen it before, but recognizable, instantly, to any one who had ridden the Western range in high-heeled boots. In some indefinable manner, with the putting off of his soldierly character, the man had instantly reverted twenty years to his youth in a roping saddle.

If she did not find the truant there, she said to herself, she would go into the Casino; for he was sure to be in one place or the other at this time of day, even though it was Christmas. She walked a little, but not much; for her high-heeled shoes were tight, and made her feel even more annoyed with the world and everyone in it except herself than she had been before she started.

The few commissions she gained hardly paid for the wear and tear of her high-heeled boots. One day at the public library she was returning a novel she had read, when a gentleman came out of an inner room and paused to speak to the librarian's assistant, with whom Maud was at the moment occupied a girl whom she had known at school, and with whom she had renewed acquaintance in this way.

Her old face took a suddenly softened look as she watched the little scene, and heard the words that passed amongst the young people. Presently she went tapping away on her high-heeled shoes, and was absent for some ten or fifteen minutes. When she came back she held in her hands a small iron-bound box, which seemed to be very heavy for its size.

For she saw something in this figure of a new type that sat before her something that the two big guns, at his hips did not hint at nor his leather chaps, the cartridge belt, the broad hat, the spurs, the high-heeled boots, the colored scarf at his throat. These things were the badges of his calling, and were, of course, indispensable, but she saw them not.

She found him standing in satin breeches, silk hose and buckled high-heeled shoes, and shirt of sheer white lawn and rare lace. He raised his drooping eyelids lazily, and looked at Janet as he lifted from the dressing-table before him rings rare jewelled and adjusted them on his white fingers.

Ursula is a dainty Venetian lady, and the bedroom in which she dreams her wonderful dream is just a room in one of the old marble palaces, with a pot of pinks upon the window-sill, and her little high-heeled Venetian shoes by the bedside.