"Betty, dearest," Emily then said, "please, please don't tell anything of your exciting story to any one else, will you? Because people are so unkind."
At this, Lady Betty bounced off again offendedly.
"You are an ungrateful pair," she flashed. "Before I brave meeting Jimmy Danvers in the passage again, in my dressing-gown, to come and tell you delicious things, I'll be hanged!"
And it was with difficulty that Emily and Mary mollified her, and got her to re-seat herself on the bed and have a bit of their bread-and-butter. She had fled to announce her thrilling news before her own tea had come.
"I do think men look perfectly horrid with their hair unbrushed in the morning, don't you, Em?" she said, presently, as she munched, while Mary poured her out some tea into the emptied sugar-basin and handed it to her. "Henry's fortunate, because his is curly"—Here Mary blushed—"and I believe Jimmy Danvers gets his valet to glue his down before he goes to bed. But you should see what Aunt Muriel has to put up with, when Uncle Aubrey comes in to talk to her, while I am there. The front, anyhow, and a lock sticking up in the back! There is one thing I am determined about. Before I'm married, I shall insist upon knowing how my husband stands the morning light."
"I thought you said just now Jimmy's was quite decent and glued down," Emily retorted slyly.
"Pouff!" said Lady Betty, with superb calm. "I have not made up my mind at all about Jimmy. He is dying to ask me, I know; but there is Bobby Harland, too. However, this morning—"
"You've seen Jimmy this morning, Betty!" Mary exclaimed.
"Well, how could I help it, girls?" Lady Betty went on, feeling that she was now a heroine. "I had to come to you. It was my bounden duty; and it's miles away, for Aunt Muriel always will have me in the dressing-room next her, when she takes me to stay out, and Uncle Aubrey across the passage; and it makes him so cross. But that's not it. I mean, it is not my fault, if the Duke has only arranged three new bathrooms down the bachelors' wing, and people are obliged to be waiting about for their turn, and I had to pass the entrance to that passage, and it happened to be Jimmy's, and he was just going in, when he saw me and rushed along, and said 'Good morning,' not a bit put out! I thought it would look silly to run, so I said 'Good morning,' too; and then we both giggled, and I came on. But I am rather glad after all, because now I've seen him; and he looks better—like that—than I am sure Bobby would have done, so perhaps, after all, I'll marry him! And you will be my bridesmaids, darlings, and now I must run!"
Upon such slender threads—the brushing of his hair—how often does the fate of man hang! If he but knew!