Mabel looked at him gratefully.
"Oh, if only Mabel had been sitting there embroidering, in her blue gown, and Bertha had shown them ceremoniously in! How lovely it would have been!" said Elma.
"I couldn't have worn my blue," said Mabel with a conscience-stricken look. "You know why."
"Oh, Mabel--the rucking! How unfortunate!"
"It never dawned on us that we should ever know them."
Cuthbert looked from one to another.
"What on earth have you been up to now?" he asked suspiciously.
"Mabel got her dress made the same as Adelaide Maud's," said Betty accusingly. She rather liked airing Mabel's mistakes just then, after having been so sat upon for her own.
"Well, it's a good thing that Adelaide Maud, as you call her, won't ever come near you," Cuthbert remarked in a savage voice.
"But it's Adelaide Maud who's in the drawing-room," said Elma.