"You'll go down in your garden tweeds and your brown boots as you are," I said, "so as not to keep the people waiting."
"What style of people are they? What do they look like, dear?" put in Vi Vassity eagerly. She has been strangling yawns all the morning, and I am sure she was only too delighted at the idea of seeing a fresh face. "Any nice boys with them?"
"No. No men at all——"
"Never are, in the country. Yet people wonder nobody takes any notice of being told to get back to the land!" said London's Love, rising to her tiny kid-shod feet, and refastening a suspender through the slit in her skirt. "What are the women like? Country rectory?"
"Yes, one lot were," I reported. "The others that came in the motor wore sort of very French hats and feather boas, and look as if they never walked."
"Charity matinée," commented England's Premier Comedienne, bustling to the door. "It's a shame not to dress for 'em. I shan't be long, Nellie. You and Ag go down first."
"How can I go down to the company until I've given my little Basil his four o'clock feed?" protested the ventriloquist's wife. She held out her arms for the long white bundle of shawls that Olive, the young nurse, lifted from the cradle set on two chairs in the corner of the room. "Nellie'll have to make her entrance alone."
And she did.
The confidence in herself that was first inspired by the Honourable Jim has been greatly fostered by Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. So I was not afraid that Miss Million would be really overpoweringly shy, even on entering a drawing-room full of strange callers.
I left her at the drawing-room door, and was hastening kitchenwards again to bring out the tea when the front-door bell rang once more. I opened it to two very tall girls in Burberry mackintoshes.