This was, somehow, quite unanswerable, and Mary had never thought of it in that light. She sat down before Valerie's pretty, tipped mirror and looked with some excitement at the rows of glittering toilet utensils set out before her. She was sure that Mrs. Upton found it nice to spend a great deal of time before her mirror.
"It is so kind of you," she repeated. "And it will be so interesting to see how you do it. And, oh, I am forgetting the thing I came for—how stupid, how wrong of me. It's a message from Jack. He wants to know if you will drive with him."
"And what are all the plans for to-day?" Mrs. Upton asked irrelevantly, unpinning the clustered knobs at the back of Mary's head and softly shaking out the stringently twisted locks as she uncoiled them.
"It is so kind of you;—but oughtn't I to take Jack his answer first?"
"The answer will wait. He has his letters to see to now. What are they all doing?"
"Well, let me see; Rose is in the hammock and Eddy is talking to her.
Imogen is going to take Miss Bocock to see her club."
"Oh, it is Imogen's club day, is it? She asked Miss Bocock?"
"Miss Bocock asked her, or, rather, Jack told her that he had been telling Miss Bocock about it; it was Jack who asked. He knew, of course, that she would be interested in it;—a big, fine person like Miss Bocock would be bound to be."
"Um," Valerie seemed vaguely to consider as she passed the comb down the long tresses. "I don't think that I can let Imogen carry off Miss Bocock;—Miss Bocock can go to the club another day; I want to do some gardening with her this morning; she's a very clever gardener, did you know?—So I shall be selfish. Imogen can take Sir Basil; he likes walks."
Mrs. Upton was now brushing, and very dexterously; but Mary, glancing at her with a little anxiety for the avowed selfishness, fancied that she was not thinking much about the hair. Mary could not quite interpret the change she felt in the lovely face. Something hard, something controlled was there.