"The dressing-tables are bigger," she urged to Mona Kenworthy. "You'd have far more room to spread out your bottles of scent and hairwash and cremolia and things."
"Thanks, I've plenty of room where I am, and my things are all nicely settled. I'm not going to move for anybody, and that's flat," returned Mona.
Dona next tackled Nellie Mason, and suggested warily that No. 5, being farther away from Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible.
Most girls would have accepted the inevitable, but Dona was not to be vanquished. She had a dark plan at the bottom of her mind, and consulted Elaine about it that afternoon. Elaine laughed, waxed enthusiastic, and suggested a visit to a bird-fancier's shop down in the town. It was a queer little place, with cages full of canaries in the window, and an aquarium, and some delightful fox-terrier puppies and Persian kittens on sale, also a squirrel which was running round and round in a kind of revolving wheel.
Elaine and Dona entered, and asked for white mice.
"Mice?" said the old man in charge. "I've got a pair here that will just suit you. They're real beauties, they are. Tame? They'll eat off your hand. Look here!"
He fumbled under the counter, and brought out a cage, from which he produced two fine and plump specimens of the mouse tribe. They justified his eulogy, for they allowed Dona to handle them and stroke them without exhibiting any signs of fear or displeasure.
"Suppose I were to let them run about the room," she enquired, "could I get them back into their cage again?"
"Easy as anything, missie. All you've got to do is to put a bit of cheese inside. They'll smell it directly, and come running home, and then you shut the door on them. They'll do anything for cheese. Give them plenty of sawdust to burrow in, and some cotton-wool to make a nest, and they're perfectly happy. Shall I wrap the cage up in brown paper for you?"
Dona issued from the shop carrying her parcel, and with a bland smile upon her face.