“You would not guess in a hundred tries,” she said.
“Then be so kind as to tell me,” remarked her husband.
Mrs. Altham read it out all in one breath without stops.
“Mrs. Evans at home Thursday July 20 10 p.m. Shakespeare Fancy Dress well I never!”
For a while little the silence of stupefaction reigned. Then Mr. Altham gave a great sigh.
“I have never been to a fancy dress ball,” he said. “I think I should feel very queer and uncomfortable. What are we meant to do when we get there, Julia? Just stand about and look at each other. It will seem very strange. What would you recommend me to be? I suppose we ought to be a pair.”
Mrs. Altham, to do her justice, had not thought seriously about her personal appearance for years. But, as she got up from the table, and consciously faced the looking-glass over the chimney-piece, it is idle to deny that she considered it now. She was not within ten years of Mrs. Ames’ age, and it struck her, as she carefully regarded herself in a perfectly honest glass, that even taking into full consideration all that Mrs. Ames had been doing to her hair and her face, she herself still kept the proper measure of their difference of years between them. But it was yet too early to consider the question of her impersonation. There were other things suggested by the contemplation of a fancy-dress ball to be considered first. There was so much, in fact, that she hardly knew where to begin. So she whisked everything up together, in the manner of a sea-pie, in which all that is possibly edible is put in the oven and baked.
“There will be time enough to talk over that, my dear,” she said, “for if Mrs. Evans thinks we are all going to lash out into no end of expense in getting dresses for her party, she is wrong as far as I, for one, am concerned. For that matter you can put on your oldest clothes, and I can borrow Jane’s apron and cap, and we can go as Darby and Joan. Indeed, I do not know if I shall go at all—though, of course, one wouldn’t like to hurt Mrs. Evans’ feelings by refusing. Do you know, Henry, I shouldn’t in the least wonder if we have seen the last of Mrs. Ames and all her airs of superiority and leadership. You may depend upon it that Mrs. Evans did not consult her before she settled to give a fancy dress party. It is far more likely that she and Major Ames contrived it all between them, while Mrs. Ames was away, and settled what they should go as, and I daresay it will be Romeo and Juliet. I should not be in the least surprised if Mrs. Ames did not go to the party at all, but tried to get something up on her own account that very night. It would be like her, I am sure. But whether she goes or not, it seems to me that we have seen the last of her queening it over us all. If she does not go, I should think she would be the only absentee, and if she does, she goes as Mrs. Evans’ guest. All these years she has never thought of a fancy dress party——”
Mrs. Altham broke off in the middle of her address, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
“Or does all this staying away on her part,” she said, “and dyeing her hair, and painting her face, mean that she knew about it all along, and was going to be the show-figure of it all? I should not wonder if that was it. As likely as not, she and Major Ames will come as Hamlet and Ophelia, or something equally ridiculous, though I am sure as far as the ‘too too solid flesh’ goes, Major Ames would make an admirable Hamlet, for I never saw a man put on weight in the manner he does, in spite of all the garden rolling, which I expect the gardener does for him really. But whatever is the truth of it all, and I’m sure every one is so secretive here in Riseborough nowadays, that you never know how many dined at such a place on such a night unless you actually go to the poulterer’s and find out whether one chicken or two was sent,—what was I saying?”