“Don’t apologize for the young person you call your niece,” Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith said, suavely. “We will lay it simply at the door of the times. There is no respect for age, say nothing of birth, in this generation.”
Miss Frazier paid slight attention to these acid remarks. She merely said to Kate in a concerned tone, “I’d go upstairs to look for her, Kate. Under no circumstances must the party be ruined for her by anybody. Do persuade her to come back and forget any hurts she may have received. Do your best.”
Kate flew away on the errand, her heart rejoiced that her aunt had answered the dowager exactly as she had.
There was no light in the girls’ suite. “She can’t be here,” Kate decided. But just to make absolutely certain she went through and, fumbling for it, turned on the switch just inside Elsie’s door.
The first thing that caught her eye under the shaded lights that blossomed forth so obediently at the pressure of her finger was the fairy green frock dropped in a heap exactly in the middle of the floor, the white sandals topping it! Elsie herself was undressed and in bed!
“Go away, go away,” she commanded, plaintively, not even looking to see who was in the room.
Kate stood dumbfounded. Then she remembered her aunt’s clouded, kind eyes, and the dowager’s haughty, skeptical nose. She braced herself. “I can’t go away,” she said softly, evenly. “Not until you get up and get dressed and come downstairs with me. How can you treat Aunt Katherine so?”
“I won’t get dressed. I won’t go down again. I hate the party! It’s your party, anyway. I’m not needed down there.”
Was Aunt Katherine right in the theory she had put forward at the Green Shutter Tea Room? Was Elsie simply jealous? But Kate rejected that thought almost before it had presented itself. In fact, she caught only the tail of it as it switched by! She spoke reasonably.
“Yes, it’s my party so-called. But you know perfectly well that Aunt Katherine means it even more for you. It’s so that you’ll get to be friendly with all the girls and boys who you say hardly speak to you. My being here was just an opportunity. Now if you vanish in the very middle of things, how do you think that will help any of us? It will be just unspeakable.”