Vitus'
dance.
His little sister was much more tractable. She had been
christened Alberta, and was called Snooky. She promised to be
pretty when she grew up, but was at this time in that distressing
transitional stage between twelve and fifteen; was long-legged,
and endowed with all the awkwardness of a colt. Her shoes were
still innocent of heels; but on those occasions when she was
allowed to wear her tiny first pair of corsets she was exalted to
an almost celestial pitch of silent ecstasy. The clasp of the
miniature stays around her small body was like the embrace of a
little lover, and awoke in her ideas that were as vague, as
immature and unformed as the straight little figure itself.
When Snooky and Howard had seated themselves, but one chair--at
the end of the breakfast-table, opposite Mr. Bessemer--remained
vacant.
"Is your sister--is Miss Travis going to have her breakfast now?
Is she got up yet?" inquired Victorine of Howard and Snooky, as
she pushed the cream pitcher out of Howard's reach. It was
significant of Mr. Bessemer's relations with his family that
Victorine did not address her question to him.
"Yes, yes, she's coming," said both the children, speaking
together; and Howard added: "Here she comes now."
Travis Bessemer came in. Even in San Francisco, where all women
are more or less beautiful, Travis passed for a beautiful girl.
She was young, but tall as most men, and solidly, almost heavily
built.
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