Dolores stood abashed, but a grey alpaca, which she had always much disliked, came out next, and Mrs. Halfpenny decided that with her black ribbons that would do, though it turned out to be rather shockingly short, and to show a great display of black legs; but as the box containing the clothes in present wear had not come to hand, this must stand for the present—and besides, a voice was heard, saying, ‘Is Dora ready?’ and a young person darted up, put her arms round her neck, and kissed her before she knew what she was about. ‘Mamma said I should come because I am just your age, thirteen and a half,’ she said. ‘I’m Mysie, though my proper name is Maria Millicent.’
Dolores looked her over. She was a good deal taller than herself, and had rich-looking shining brown hair, dark brown eyes full of merriment, and a bright rosy colour, and she danced on her active feet as if she were full of perpetual life. ‘All happy and not caring,’ thought Dolores.
‘Now don’t fash Miss Mohun with your tricks. She has stood like a lamb,’ said Mrs. Halfpenny reprovingly. ‘There, we’ll not keep her to find an apron.’
‘I don’t wear pinafores,’ said Mysie, ‘but I don’t mind pretty aprons like this. ‘Why, my sisters had them for tennis, before they went out to India. Come along, Dora,’ grasping her hand.
‘My name isn’t Dora,’ said the new-comer, as they went down the passage.
‘No,’ said Mysie, in a low voice; ‘but mamma told Gill—that’s Gillian, and me, that we had better not tell anybody, because if the boys heard they might tease you so about it; for Wilfred is a tease, and there’s no stopping him when mamma isn’t there. So she said she would call you Dora, or Dolly, whichever you liked, and you are not a bit like a Dolly.’
‘They always called me Dolly,’ said Dolores; ‘and if I am not to have my name, I like that best; but I had rather have my proper name.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Mysie; ‘it is more out of the way, only it is very long.’
By this time they had descended a long narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs, ‘the back ones,’ as Mysie explained, and had reached a slippery oak hall with high-backed chairs, and all the odds and ends of a family-garden hats, waterproofs, galoshes, bats, rackets, umbrellas, etc., ranged round, and a great white cockatoo upon a stand, who observed—‘Mysie, Cockie wants his breakfast,’ as they went by towards the door, whence proceeded a hubbub of voices and a clatter of knives and jingle of teaspoons and cups, a room that as Mysie threw open the door seemed a blaze of sunshine, pouring in at the large window, and reflected in the glass and silver. Yes, and in the bright eyes and glossy hair of the party who sat round the breakfast-table, further brightened by the fire, pleasant in the early autumn.
Eyes, as it seemed to Dolores, eyes without number were levelled on her, as Mysie led her in, saying—