The Growing Pains of Sybil

Meet Sour-Puss Sybil.
She's looking rather lovely in her best frock and pearls.
A rosy glow to her fair cheeks, a dab of lipstick, but not too much, Mother won't allow it.
Not after the fruit punch incident at the Fair Maiden's Ball last spring.
Aunt Bea said it was a disgraceful start to the season and now Father won't let Sybil out unchaperoned.

She has a full year to wait before she comes of age and her trust allowance starts, meanwhile, she has a good-sized chip on her shoulder the size of that on her portrait frame.
She never had good aim and pewter candlesticks are not as hard as silver.
Drat her brother's poker losing streak.

So poor Sour-Puss Sybil has been sent to stay with Aunt Dotty at the seaside.
Aunt Dotty is the only relative who would take on Sybil and now it's clear to the young lady why.

Aunt Dotty refuses to let her grey hair show, instead dyeing her hair platinum blond.
Scandalous for an ageing crone of 46.
She insists her under garments are too pretty to hide beneath frocks and she boldly wears her slips in public without a care.
She sways between humour and oblivion to the stares and whispers when she steps out with her pretty, yet silly, niece on her arm.

Aunt Bea can barely utter her younger sister's name without having a coughing fit and she's carefully cut Aunt Dotty's photographs out of the family album.
There's talk of a man, but no-one's seen him and it's said she wears his image on her ears.
If he's as handsome and wicked as he looks in the photograph, it's no wonder she's keeping him all to herself.

Finally, there's the bare legs in summer with purple toenails if you please!
Sybil can barely contain herself from asking her Aunt why she wears wings on her strange shoes and a woman in her 40s should at least be wearing a slip and stockings.
But Aunt Dotty insists she IS wearing a slip and one day women young and old will swap the silly stockings for artificial tanning to disguise evidence of summertime bites.
Meanwhile, Sour-Puss Sybil, who was once adamant that Pongo's parties were "simply the thing", spends most of her evenings these days with a furrowed brow, awaiting whatever evening's entertainment her Aunt will produce.
What will it be?  A seance?  A late-night trawl of dubious nightspots?  Cake for supper?  Knife-throwing or dance lessons?
Perhaps in time, Sybil's scowl will disappear.  Time will tell.