"And you must have a great talk with me, Dodo," she said, "and tell me all about your honeymoon."
Dodo was pleased and rather flattered. Apparently Mrs. Vivian had left off thinking she was very small. Anyhow, it was a good thing to have her. Lord Chesterford would be pleased to see her, and he was building some charming almshouses for old women, who appeared to Dodo to be supremely uninteresting and very ugly. Dodo had a deep-rooted dislike for ugly things, unless they amused her very much. She could not bear babies. Babies had no profiles, which seemed to her a very lamentable deficiency, and they were not nearly so nice to play with as kittens, and they always howled, unless they were eating or sleeping. But Mrs. Vivian seemed to revel in ugly things. She was always talking to drunken cabmen, or workhouse people, or dirty little boys who played in the gutter. Dodo's cometic interest in the East End had been entirely due to her. That lady had a masterly and efficient way of managing, that won Dodo's immediate admiration, and had overcome for the moment her distaste for the necessary ugliness. Anything masterly always found a sympathetic audience in Dodo. Success was of such paramount importance in her eyes, that even a successful organiser of days in the country for match-girls was to be admired, and even copied, provided the other circumstances of success were not too expensive.
Mrs. Vivian was a complete and immediate success on this occasion. Dodo made a quantity of mental notes on the best way to behave, when you have the misfortune to become middle-aged and rather plain. Everyone who already knew her seemed to consider her arrival as the last drop in their cup of happiness. Lord Chesterford, on entering the room, had said, "My dear Mrs. Vivian, this is too delightful of you. We are all charmed to see you," and he had sat down by her, and quite seemed to forget that Dodo was sitting on the other side of the fire. Jack also had, so to speak, flown into her arms. Dodo immediately resolved to make a friend of her; a person who could be as popular among the aristocracy as she was among cabmen was distinctly a person to cultivate. She decidedly wanted the receipt.
"It is so good of you, Dodo, to ask me like this," said Mrs. Vivian, when Dodo went and sat by her. "It always seems to me a great compliment to ask people quietly to your house when only a few friends are there. If you have a great houseful of people, it does not matter much whom you ask, but I mean to take this as a sign that you consider me an old friend."
Dodo was always quick at seeing what was required of her.
"Of course I do," she answered. "Who are my old friends if you are not?"
"That is so nice of you," said Mrs. Vivian. "I want to have a long talk with you, and learn all about you. I am going to stay with your mother next week, and she will never forgive me unless I give a full and satisfactory account of you. Satisfactory it cannot help being." She looked across to Lord Chesterford, who was talking to Miss Grantham, and laughing politely at her apostolic jokes. "Oh, Dodo, you ought to be very happy!"
Dodo felt that this was rather like the ten minutes before dinner. She had a vague idea of telling Chesterford to sound the gong, but she was skilled at glances with meaning, and she resorted to this method.
"Lord Chesterford tells me you have Miss Staines with you," continued Mrs. Vivian. "I am so anxious to meet her. She has a wonderful gift for music, I hear."
At this moment the sound of hurrying feet was heard in the hall. The drawing-room door flew open and Edith entered. Dodo laughed inwardly and hopelessly. Edith began to talk at the top of her voice, before, she was fairly inside the room.