'Don't walk too much, child,' Caroline said. 'It enlarges the feet.
Girls nowadays can wear their brothers' shoes and men don't like that.
Have I ever told you'--Caroline was given to repetition of her
stories--'how one of my partners, ridiculous creature, insisted on
calling me Cinderella for a whole evening? Do you remember, Sophia?'

'Yes, dear,' Sophia said, and she determined that some day, when she
was alone with Henrietta, she would tell her that she, too, had been
called Cinderella that night. It was hard, but, since she loved her
sister, not so very hard, to ignore her own little triumphs, yet she
would like Henrietta to know of them. 'Dear child,' she murmured
vaguely.

'We have our shoes made for us,' Caroline went on. 'It's necessary.'
She snorted scorn for a large-footed generation.

Rose laughed. She said, 'Walk as much as you like, Henrietta. Health
is better than tiny feet.'

Henrietta had no response for this remark. For the first time she felt
out of sympathy with her surroundings, and her resentment against Rose
spread to her other aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and
little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life.
They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed;
they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their
white hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and
she felt a bitterness against them all. 'Nonsense, Rose, what do you
know about it?' Caroline asked. 'You're a nun, that's what you are.'

'Ah, lovely!' Sophia sighed, but Henrietta, thinking of that man in