Explore "The Convict Ship, Volume III" by W. Clark Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The salt water refreshed me greatly, and my cheeks burned like roses and my eyes shone when I had dried myself. A square of mirror hung near the washstand. I had thought to see myself looking ill and yellow and wretched; and my breast swelled at sight of my handsome, sparkling face, so proud did my beauty make me feel for Tom's sake.
And yet I was now grown so used to my male attire that when I had clothed myself in my Woolwich dress, as I call it -- and scarcely less strange than my own were the fortunes of this bundle of apparel -- I found myself very uneasy. I missed the freedom of my legs. I don't wonder that women should struggle from time to time to invent a dress that gives their limbs the liberty which men enjoy. However, I clothed myself very carefully, and when I had put on my hat I thought I looked the saucier and more piquant for my hair being cropped short. Do not call this egotism. It is my way of telling the story. I who relate it am old, and my youth and beauty are as the dust of half a century.