"Why! Tom's fiancée! Surely I told you!"
"Yes," said Hilda; "only I didn't just remember the name. How nice!"
(She thought: "No sooner do I get here than I talk like they do! Fancy me saying, 'How nice'!")
"Oh, it's all Edie nowadays!" said Alicia lightly. "We have to be frightfully particular, or else Tom would cut our heads off. That's why we're going in a cab! We should have walked,--shouldn't we, Janet?--only it would never do for us to walk to the Marrions' at night! 'The Misses Lessways' carriage!'" she mimicked, and finicked about on her toes.
Janet was precisely the same as ever, but the pig-tailed Alicia had developed. Her childishness was now shot through with gestures and tones of the young girl. She flushed and paled continuously, and was acutely self-conscious and somewhat vain, but not offensively vain.
"I say, Jan," she exclaimed, "why shouldn't Hilda come with us?"
"To the Marrions'? Oh no, thanks!" said Hilda.
"But do, Hilda! I'm sure they'd be delighted!" Janet urged. "I never thought of it."
Though she was flattered and, indeed, a little startled by the extraordinary seriousness of Janet's insistence, Hilda shook her head.
"Where's Tom?" she inquired, to change the subject.