Ethel Turner

“ Aldith put her arm more tightly round her friend.
"Wouldn't it be heavenly, Marguerite, to be engaged—you and I?" she said, in a tone of dreamy rapture. "To have a dark, handsome man with proud black eyes just dying with love for you, going down on his knees, and giving you presents, and taking you out and all—oh, Marguerite, just think of it!"
Meg's eyes looked wistful. "We're not old enough, though, yet," she said with a sigh. ”

“ She never called her friend Meg, pronouncing that name to be "too domestic and altogether unlovely."
Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful one, and sighed profoundly.
"What ought I to be?" she said in a low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen—or nineteen, Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never be obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round." ”

“ To walk quickly was positive pain; to stoop, almost agony; but she endured it all with a heroism worthy of a truly noble cause.
"How long shall I have to go on like this, Aldith?" she asked once faintly, after a French lesson that she had scarcely been able to sit through. And the older girl answered carelessly, "Oh, you mustn't leave it off, of course, but you don't feel it at all after a bit."
With which assurance Meg pursued her painful course. ”