The Dark Glassesからの英文です。
We went into the examination room. She glided past me and switched on the dim light above the letter card. I began to read out the letters while Basil Simmonds stood with folded hands. Someone came into the front shop. Miss Simmonds slid off to see who it was and her brother tickled my neck. I read on. He drew me towards him. I put my hand into my blazer pocket. He said, "Oh!" and sprang away as the hat-pin struck through my blazer and into his thigh.
Miss Simmonds appeared in the doorway in her avenging white overall. Her brother, who had been rubbing his thigh in a puzzled way, pretended to be dusting a mark off the front of his trousers.
"What's wrong? Why did you shout?" she said.
"No, I didn't shout."
Muriel SparkのThe Dark Glassesからの英文です。
Basil Simmondsは検眼士です。
主人公の女の子が検眼している場面です。
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●Miss Simmonds appeared in the doorway in her avenging white overall.のin her avenging white overallの個所はどのように意味を理解して読むのでしょうか？
avengingは復讐する、という意味ですか？
●Her brother, who had been rubbing his thigh in a puzzled way, pretended to be dusting a mark off the front of his trousers.のpretended to be dusting a mark off the front of his trousersについて教えてください。
pretended to be dusting ～は「～を払っているふりをする」？
a markは印を？
offはdustingと繋がって意味をとるのでしょうか？（dust a mark offで「印を払う」ですか？）
front of his trousersは「彼のズボンの前で」？
教えてください。宜しくお願いします。
前文は
I broke the glasses by sitting on them during my school holidays two years later.
My grandmother said, after she had sighed, "It's time you had your eyes tested--"
"--eyes tested in any case," said my aunt when she had sighed.
I washed my hair the night before and put a wave in it. Next morning at eleven I walked down to Mr Simmonds's with one of my grandmother's long hat-pins in my blazer pocket. The shop front had been done up, with gold lettering on the glass door: Basil Simmonds, Optician, followed by a string of letters which, so far as I remember, were FBOA, AIC, and others.
You're quite the young lady, Joan," he said, looking at my new breasts.
I smiled and put my hand in my blazer pocket.
He was smaller than he had been two years ago. I thought he must be about fifty or thirty. His face was more freckled than ever and his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paints. Miss Simmonds appeared silently in her soft slippers. "You're quite the young lady, Joan," she said from behind her green glasses, for her right eye had now gone blind and the other was said to be troubling her.
となっています。
