"I suppose," said she, "they wear them things that they call corsets,
under 'em. I've heard of 'em--I saw one, once--but I ain't never had
one. Maybe I had better get one."

He spoke hastily. At that moment, as he gazed at her slim grace,
undulant, untrammelled and as willowy as a spring sapling's, it seemed
to him that it would be a sacrilege to confine it in the stiff rigidity
of such artificialities as corsets. It seemed a bit indelicate, to him,
to talk to her about such matters, but her guilelessness was so real and
he was so assured of his own innocence, that he did what he could to
make things clear to her. He descanted with some eloquence upon the
wickedness of lacing, the ungracefulness of artificial forms and the
beauty of her own wholly natural grace.

"I'm glad you think I'm pretty," she said frankly, plainly greatly
pleased, "but I reckon I'd be prettier if I had one of them there
corsets."

His protests to the contrary were not convincing, in the least.

So the lessons from the book did not go so very far that day.

"Furbelows have always interested females, I suppose," said he, "but I
didn't really think you'd lose your interest in spelling-books because
of them."

"I ain't lost interest in spelling-books," she said. "I ain't lost
interest, at all. After I've studied good and hard I can read all about
such things in the picture-papers that Mom Liza has down to the store.