“I hope we are the first guests,” cried Miss Lady, shaking a scarf from her head, “because we have had an accident. We both fell down. Connie slipped on the step and I sat down on top of her. There was an awful rip and we don't know whose it is! I'm afraid to take my coat off!”
“But where is the Doctor?” cried Mrs. Sequin in dismay.
“Father would love to have come,” began Connie glibly, but Miss Lady broke in: “I don't think he really wanted to come, Mrs. Sequin. He said he would be ever so much happier up in his study, playing pinocle, than sitting out here in a straight-back gilt chair eating ice cream. Perhaps you think I oughtn't to have come without him?”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Sequin. “I get perfectly exasperated when Cousin John does this way. There were at least a half dozen people I'd promised to introduce to him. If he had no consideration for me he ought to have for you. He has been keeping you at home entirely too much. He forgets that you are twenty years his junior; he expects you to act as if you were forty.”
“No, he doesn't,” protested Miss Lady loyally; “the Doctor never expects anything of anybody that isn't right. He urged me to come, didn't he, Connie?”
But Connie was absorbed in a trailing flounce that hung limply about her feet.
“Look!” she cried tragically; “it's torn clear across the front. What shall I do?”
“Margery's gowns would all be too long for you,” said Mrs. Sequin, viewing the rent through her lorgnette, “perhaps Marie can do something with this.”
“I won't wear it all tacked up!” cried Connie on the verge of tears; “I'll go home first—”
“No, you won't,” said Miss Lady; “this is your first grown-up party and you've been counting on it for weeks. You are going to change dresses with me. I don't mind a bit being hiked up a little, and, besides, nobody's going to notice me.”