"O dreadfully tight and wretched. Now if I have any breath left I will go on telling you who is asked for to-night. Aunt is coming for one, with the Pagets, you know. That means a party of three at once. Then the rector and Mrs. Benson. Now, let me see, with father, mother, and myself that is eight; and I am sure we are to be fourteen. O, I know—Colonel and Mrs. Danvers, Captain Hall, that's eleven: Mrs. Horton and Hugh, thirteen—now who is fourteen?"
"Why, Molly's old friend, Sir Peter Beresford," chimes in Honor. "I know he is coming, because I heard mother telling Rankin that he must be put up near the end of the table out of all the draughts. O, here comes Lane. I wonder what she will have to say to the capabilities of the new maid."
"Now, young ladies, sharp's the word. Turn yourself round, Miss Doris, and let me see if all's right;" and the woman proceeds to turn and twist her young mistress about with the scant ceremony of an old and privileged servant who, as she is fond of saying, "dressed and waited on your ma before ever you were born or thought of, my dears." Giving a pull here, and a twist there, Lane at length is pleased to announce that all is satisfactory.
At this moment Mrs. Merivale glides into the room, a floating ensemble of velvet, silk, lace, bugles, feathers, and what not; one of those costumes in which you can accuse nothing of being predominant, and as a whole is perfect.
"Mother!" gasp both the girls. "What a lovely dress, and how nicely Lane has done your hair!"
Lane sniffs gracious approval of this compliment, and turning to her mistress says, "I think Miss Doris will do, ma'am?"
Holding her double eye-glass up by its beautiful mother-of-pearl handle, the mother makes a critical survey of her daughter from head to foot, then dropping it languidly to her side she nods encouragingly. "Yes, very nice. Nothing like white silk for very young girls. Satin is too old looking. Honor, your dressing does you credit, dear; you have done her hair charmingly. Now you may as well come down at once with me, Doris. Have you everything—fan, handkerchief, gloves? Oh, I see you have those on! wise girl to get them nicely arranged before you leave your room."
"O! that was Honor's doing, not mine," says Doris promptly. "She would have me rigged out all complete, as Dick would say."
"Doris!" exclaims Mrs. Merivale as she sails out of the room followed by that young lady, "pray do not always be using those expressions which Dick seems to delight in,—troublesome boy! You are always down upon him for these Americanisms which he has picked up (at school, I suppose), but it seems to me you are ready enough to make use of them too. I do hope you will be careful to behave nicely altogether to-night, and not like a hoydenish school-girl as you do more often, I fear, especially when Miss Denison is not by."
"O don't be anxious about me, mother; I shall pull through somehow, and conduct myself with such propriety as even to satisfy Aunt Sophia. If you should see me doing anything dreadful at the dinner-table, and I am too far away for a stage-whisper, you might 'hail' like Mary Ann the scholar in Our Mutual Friend, you know, then I shall understand and pull myself together."