“That was so very long ago,” she said, as she ran into the house, and opened the drawing-room door.
Mrs Kingsworth was writing a note. “Katharine, I have accepted Mrs Deane’s invitation,” she said.
“Have you? Oh, mamma, that’s lovely of you!” cried Kate. “I never, never could have borne to stay at home.”
“Thank you, Aunt Mary, we did wish very much to go,” said Emberance.
“I suppose you did,” said Mrs Kingsworth. “Your uncle thought that I ought to take you, and he wishes to give you your dresses for the occasion.”
“Oh, how very kind!” cried Emberance, with an immediate sense of delightful provision for many a Fanchester gaiety, beyond the special occasion, while Kate danced about the room, without a care for the future.
The white dresses, with white heather and fern leaves, promised to be equally becoming to Kate’s vivid roses and chestnut locks, and to her cousin’s blush-rose fairness and slender grace; and though Emberance was far the handsomer girl of the two, Katharine’s chances were doubtless balanced by her heirship.
“I do hope I shall get some partners,” she said energetically, one day, when the two girls had gone to play lawn-tennis at the Vicarage. “I hope I shall dance every dance.”
“Will you dance with me, Miss Kingsworth?” said Fred Clare, a youth of eighteen, at home, in an interval between school and college.
“Oh, yes,” said Kate, heartily. “I should like to dance the first dance with you, because I can dance easily with you; and perhaps I shall not be able to manage it with strange partners.”