"My! how nice!" Matilda sighed again. Her imagination could hardly take in such luxury. It seemed to her that Katherine must be living in almost gilded vice!
"Then after tea, if I am not sent for to do any special thing, I read to myself. I look up anything that I don't know about that I have chanced to hear spoken of by the people who come—I am allowed to take books from the library."
"Then you do see people sometimes?" Matilda's interest revived again. "What are they like, Kitten?"
"Sometimes I do, but not often—only when I chance to be sent for, but next week Her Ladyship has got a big charity tableaux entertainment on hand, that she is arranger and patroness of, and I shall come across lots of people of society, some of the ones you know the names of so well in the Flare."
"The Duchess of Dashington and the Countess of Blanktown—really, Kitten!"
This was fashion, indeed!
"Probably—but I don't know about the Duchess of Dashington. I don't think Lady Garribardine approves of her."
"Not approve of the Duchess of Dashington!" Matilda exclaimed, indignantly. "Her that has gentlemen to tea in her bedroom to give herself airs like that! Well, I never!"
This particular Duchess' photographs were the joy of the halfpenny illustrated papers, and Matilda was accustomed to see her in skating costume waltzing with her instructor, and in golf costume and in private theatrical costumes, almost every other week.
"No—she speaks of her very cheaply—but I will tell you all about it on Sunday fortnight. I'll have heard everything by then, because the tableaux will be over."