“Do you mind if I take the car this afternoon, Aunt Marion, since you’re not going to use it.”
“Take it of course; but where are you going?”
“I thought I would ask that protégée of Rash Allerton’s, of whom we were speaking yesterday, to come for a drive with me. But if you’d rather I didn’t––”
“I’ve nothing to do with it. It’s entirely for you to say. The car is yours, of course.”
The invitation being transmitted by telephone Steptoe urged Letty to accept it. “It’ll be all in the wye of madam’s gettin’ used to things—a bit at a time like.”
“But I don’t think she likes me.”
“If madam won’t stop to think whether people likes ’er or not I think madam ’d get for’arder. Besides madam’ll pretty generally always find as love-call wykes love-echo, as the syin’ goes.”
Which, as a matter of fact, was what Letty did find. She found it from the minute of entering the car and taking her seat, when Miss Walbrook exclaimed heartily: “What a lovely dress! And the hat’s too sweet! Suits you exactly, doesn’t it? My dear, I’ve the greatest bother ever to find a hat that doesn’t make me look like a scarecrow.”
From the naturalness of the tone there was no suspecting the cost of these words to the speaker, and the subject was one in which Letty was at home. In turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook’s appearance, duly admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet, with a little bunch of roses artfully disposed, and the coat of prune-colored Harris tweed. In further discussing 240 the length of the new skirts and the chances of the tight corset coming back they found topics of common interest. The fact that they were the topics which came readiest to the lips of both made it possible to maintain the conversation at its normal give-and-take, while each could pursue the line of her own summing up of the other.