“So do I,” said Dolly, “I think it’s horrid here.”
It wasn’t really horrid at all, but to be unwelcome guests in a strange house is not especially pleasant, no matter how pretty the house may be.
The twins had been taken up to Mrs. Hampton’s sitting-room, and in charge of a maid, had been served with a delightful little supper. Bread and milk, jam, fresh strawberries, and dear little cakes, followed by ice cream, made a goodly feast indeed. After it, their spirits rose a little, and they ate their ice cream with smiling faces.
“I think the aunties decided to come this evening instead of afternoon,” said Dick, unable to think of any other explanation.
“They never do make calls in the evening but perhaps that’s it,” said Dolly, doubtfully. “I hear people coming in, Dick, let’s go and look over the banisters.”
Carrying their ice cream plates with them the twins stepped out into the hall and looked over the banisters on the scene below.
It was a fascinating glow of lights and flowers and ladies and gentlemen in evening dress, for the dinner guests had come, and were standing about, engaged in conversation.
Dolly was enchanted with the grand ladies, with jewels in their hair, and with low-necked gowns, and Dick, too, leaned over the banister to see the gay scene. So absorbed were they that they did not heed their melting ice cream, and, almost at the same moment, the soft, cold mass slid from each tipped-up plate, on the heads and shoulders of the ladies and gentlemen below.
Such a shriek of dismay as arose brought Dick and Dolly to a realisation of what they had done, and in an agony of mortification they fled back to the sitting-room.
Here Mrs. Hampton found them, their heads buried in sofa pillows, and crying in muffled paroxysms.