THE CLEVER GIRL'S SECRET.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5069, 14 April 1885, Page 2

THE CLEVER GIRL'S SECRET.

It isn't: often that a clever girl is caught at anything ungraceful in the way of public eating. Macaroni may entrap her once, but this is exceptional. I will let you into something which is as yet a sort of secret, but which, in the nature of things, can't long remain so. The New York beau usually finds, on enquiry, after the theatrical performance or opera is over, that his belle has a big midnight appetite: This physical condition is not so much the result of the lapsing hours since her last meal as that she did not then permit herself to eat all she could hold. Knowing very well the discomfort of sitting, for a long evening in a corsage additionally tightened by a hearty dinner, she fasts rather than submit to worse annoyance. In the nearest restaurant to the playhouse she encompasses more than her adjusted corset would allow her to hold. How is that? I will solre the mystery. Observe that, on taking a seat at a table she simulates a shiver and remarks that she will keep on her cloak. Pretty soon, when the plate of fried oysters and bottle of ale are set before her, the fair hands disappear underneath the ample wrap. There are surface indications of fumbling in the region of her waist, and then a general relaxation. She sighs, but it is expressive of relief instead of sorrow, and the rapt escort is a little shocked by her suddenly complacent, even voracious, contemplation of the solid food. What has she done P A pull at a string has loosened all the stays of her corset, and an unbuttoning of her dress has freed her girth from all restrietiona. She will now easily accommodate whatever she chooses to swallow, and the wrap will hide the matter safely until the disappears from the sight of the beau into her owu borne,