“I have no dress good enough,” she told Doreen when they talked it over, “and I can’t afford to get a new one on purpose.”
“Nonsense,” asserted Doreen promptly. “I know quite well you have. Why, that pretty dress you had for our coming-out dance is not two years old, and you have scarcely worn it at all. You must just send it to me, and I will get Jean to do it up for you. You simply must come. It will be such a jolly dance. Not a grand one at all, but one of Gwen’s impromptu hops, as she calls them.”
In the end Paddy gave in, and on the evening of the dance arrived at Cadogan Place in time to go with Doreen and Lawrence in their brougham. She knew Lawrence would be there, but was prepared for it, and chatted merrily to Doreen without ever including him if she could help it.
Lawrence took no notice, merely sitting forward, opposite to them, with his arms across his knees, casually glancing through an evening paper.
When Paddy first arrived Doreen had made her take off her cloak and show herself, and he had then, as she well knew, though he said nothing, criticised her keenly. Doreen had been enraptured.
“You look splendid!” was her verdict. “I don’t know what it is about you, Paddy, but somehow you always manage to look striking nowadays. Don’t you think so, Lawrence? Here am I, got up at endless expense, mentioned in the fashionable papers as ‘pretty Miss Doreen Blake,’ and yet, when we go into the room together, I’m sure everyone will look at you.”
“If they do, it will only be my hair,” laughed Paddy. “It’s so difficult not to stare at carroty hair.”
“Stuff!” from Doreen. “But am I not right, Lawrence?”
Lawrence was standing a little apart, lighting a cigarette, and he did not answer for a moment.
“Paddy has a lot of original ideas,” he said at last, “and they somehow cling about her. The crowd is always struck with anything original.”