"If I had one, I'd give it 'ee." It's not just a rush of generosity that makes Susan say it. Rather, it's a stab of anger at the unfairness of it all. Eponine, she's sure, would have taken kindly enough to Hart Thorin's gifts, to silk shirts and petticoats and embroidered gowns. Eponine would have stood still and let herself be poked by pins while they fitted her for all those endless, endless Reaptide dresses. Eponine might - and the thought feels small and mean and hard - have thought it worth the price. Might have delighted, not recoiled, from the scooping necklines meant to draw the eye to her tits, the thin and clinging cloth that stuck too close to the body.

And, again, there's that guilt, for hadn't Susan cast them aside? Wasn't she just as ungrateful as Aunt Cordelia had accused her of being, tossing silks and satins aside for her pa's old work shirt and rolled-up jeans?

It's unfair. It's unfair that she had such clothes and hated them, and that Eponine had nothing. It's unfair that anyone would laugh at Eponine, and that anyone would slaver so over Susan. It's unfair in a way that makes her angry at herself, and at the world that's let it be that way for women everywhere, and - in a queer, oblique sort of way - at Eponine herself for making her feel that way. For not giving her anything to say but if.

"Ye'd be pretty," she offers, by way of conciliation, though whether it's herself or Eponine she's trying to reconcile with, she isn't sure. "If ye had a proper bath, and let someone do up your hair and put a dab of rouge on, ye'd be plenty beautiful." It's only when it's out that she realises that word's crept in again, that if, and she could kick herself.