The Magnetic Girl

It was the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to anyone. I really hardly know how to begin to tell about it. I was doing my hair before the looking-glass in my bedroom-and I could not help noticing that it was rather a curious colour, though my eyes were nearly blinded by tears of rage, and something else. The rage was because Lilian and Audrey and Eveleen and Doris, and mother too, had been saying all the nasty things they could to me. The something else was because Benjamin Morgan had asked me to be his wife. There-it's out! My first proposal of marriage-my very, very first! and that it should have come from him! It made me go hot all over with shame and disgust and a most singular variety of feelings. They had been teasing me about him for ever so long; congratulating me-of course, with the most biting sarcasm-on having made a conquest at last. I am twenty-three, and nearly twenty-four, and no man ever paid me the least attention-until Mr Morgan began. And I wished he had not; because they made the most dreadful fun of him, and teased me more than they had ever done before-which is saying more than words can describe-on account of his being a hunchback.